Purgatory Road - Ray Wylie Hubbard

Mama comes in from the kitchen

She tells me to fetch my brother

She wipes her hands on her apron

And says don’t be late for supper

I walk out on the front porch

The suns about to die

It’s still so hot the old dogs wouldn’t bark

Even if a car’s to drive by

There s a blue green Buick

And a flat black Ford

Jacked up off the ground

Daddy sitting on a stump and he’s looking bewildered

At the parts lying all around

We ain’t been no where at all since the Fairlane threw a rod

Whatever it is has been damned to hell by my daddy and God

Some are here working on a passage to Heaven

And others they can’t carry that load

A few are left singing the blues on Purgatory Road

It is just a mile or so to the edge of town

There ain’t much of one here now since the factories closed down

You got no jobs you got no people you got no businesses

The only thing left is the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah Witness

Mama she took me to church one time gonna get me baptized

Further on down the road there is something I realized

Now you might say its contempt prior to investigation

But nobody seems concerned about their Saviors procrastination

Some are here working on a passage to Heaven

And others they can’t carry that load

A few are left singing the blues on Purgatory Road

I just past the cemetery with it’s tumped over tomb stones

There’s a little tavern that’s called the Devils Backbone

It’s got your distilled spirits and Tennessee Sour Mash

And a little sign that says in God we trust, all others pay cash

My brother’s sitting on a chair in front of an old tweed amplifier

He’s playing bottle neck slide, steel on wire

Now when his mother died and his daddy left my momma she brought him home

And even thought he ain’t blood she raised him as her own

So now he sings them blues on an old Gibson 160E

And he don’t even now what color he is cause he can’t see

Some are here working on a passage to Heaven

And others they can’t carry that load

A few are left singing the blues on Purgatory Road