California Cottonfields - Merle Haggard, The Strangers

My driftin' mem’ry goes back to the spring of '43

When I was just a child in mama’s arms

My daddy plowed the ground and prayed that some day we could leave

This run down mortaged Oklahoma farm

Then one night I heard my daddy sayin' to my mama

That he finally saved enough for us to go

California was his dream a paradise wall he had seen

Pictures in magazines that told him so California cottonfields

Where labor camps were full of worried men with broken dreams

California cottonfields was as close to wealth as daddy ever came

Almost everything we had was sold or left behind

From daddy’s plow and the fruit that mama canned

Some folks came to say farewell and see what all we had to sell

But some just came to shake my daddy’s hand

The Model A was loaded down and California bound

And a change of luck was just four days away

But the only change that I remember seeing for my daddy

Was when his dark hair had turned to silver gray

California cottonfields…

California cottonfields…