When Papa Played the Dobro

Ride this train to any country fair in this land

Now here's a hard working happy people

Mrs Jones baked the finest pie for the contest this year

And Mr Brown's got the biggest fattest old sow you ever saw

And all the kids are eatin' popcorn and cotton candy

This is Chester South, Carolina, and that year at the fair

My papa brought us all down in a wagon

And on the way down we picked up another family that lived up the creek

I was just a little boy but I remember I kept askin' papa

How much farther is it, how much farther is it

We had a young heffer tied to the wagon that papa just knew

Was gonna take first prize.

I didn't have no doubt about that heffer winning first prize

But the main thing I was interested in

Was somethin' else papa had under his seat, at the front of the wagon

And that was an old dobro that I thought papa played like nobody else in the world

I guess by real musical standards papa didn't know much about music

But I tell you that night at the fair when he played in the dance band

I just had to stay awake sat up there and listen to papa play the dobro

My papa was a hobo when they delivered me

We didn't have a doctor cause he couldn't pay the fee

But when the goin' got too bad to ease his misery

Papa played the dobro this a way and he'd go

When company would come around, he kept the dobro hid

He knew he couldn't play the way the other players did

Why the guitar's resonator was a gallon bucket lid

But papa played the dobro this a way and he'd go

Well now that papa's gone away it's hanging by the flue

The top of it's rusted and the strings're rusty too

It won't ever sound the way that it did when it was new

When papa played the dobro this a way and he'd go.