Well the old house needs a painting after all the winter floods,
You can't sit on the window ledge there's still a trace of mud.
Everybody's pushin' shovels, diggin' in the dirt, didn't come to cause them trouble, and I know the truth would hurt.
Well no one's heard from Abraham in over thirty days,
There's talk in Mama's restaurant that he got swept away,
But I cannot believe them, I refuse to mourn, he's been lookin' to get out of here since the day when he was born.
The windows of the steeple, they've been covered up with wood,
Cause there is not too much faith no more in this old neighborhood, and I got to keep explainin' it to all the folks I knew,
That I'm only here to see my pa, I'm only passin' through.
Well everybody asks me, how I've managed where I've been,
All the friends are second cousins, and all the next of kin, gettin' lots of good to see yous and won't you please come in,
I can tell from every handshake, they was lyin' through their skin.
And I stopped by the cemetary,
I came to pay my last respects, to the one who'd lived forever,
He died of a broken neck,
From the weight upon his shoulders,
The man had finally hung his head, so I laid a wreath above him,
For the honest life he lead.
There are a lot more of those tombstones than there ever were before, people dyin' so much younger now there's not much hope no more, and I can't tell anybody, how I seen a glimpse of death,
Nobody wants to hear it, and I shouldn't waste my breath.
The ghost of Mrs. Addison, she was haunting me last night,
People said she still livin', but her face is much too white,
She used to be my teacher, she retired to collect,
But it's been almost a year now since she last recieved a check.
People talk of hard times, and the government reports,
In the newspapers and the radios and the television shorts, but it's been that way a long time here, and it will go on,
But tomorrow I'll be gone.
Well the old house needs a painting after all the winter floods,
You can't sit on the window ledge there's still a trace of mud.
Everybody's pushin' shovels, diggin' in the dirt,
Did not come to cause them trouble,
And I know the truth would hurt.