Frisco Road

A long lonesome go rolling down the Frisco Road
Every mile feeling I was all alone
In the places that I’ve seen
Summer’s fat and winter’s lean
And don’t you know I wish that I could go back home
I don’t know where I left it
Though it’s always on my mind
I ask the same old questions all the time
Is the old town still the same?
Does anybody know my name?
The years slip by like numbers on an endless high way sign
Standing here in the breakdown lane, don’t think I’ll make it today;
And I wish the road was a big freight train, blowing and rolling my way
I know the rain wouldn’t seem so cold on the top of an old boxcar
And wherever it was I was trying to go, it wouldn’t seem half so far
I remember the Roper yard cafe and a pretty little beanery queen;
She gave those jailhouse spuds away to a tramp she’d never seen
Well, I tipped her with a couple of rhymes on the back of a placemat there
And I’ve thought about her plenty of times when I couldn’t bum a square
Or the time we rode on a piggy-back, punching the Great Divide;
The blowing snow had iced the track and the train got stuck inside;
The diesel fumes they got so thick I thought we’d all be gassed
Then they sanded her out just in the nick and punched her through at last
Now I don’t claim to be too proud to shag a ride on my thumb
But I’d trade this whole hitch-hiking crowd for a honest old railroad bum;
And if there ever comes a day when the rails have gone to rust
I’ll put my jug and bindle away and give up in disgust
Beyond these gentle Eastern hills and the soft New England sky
Do the highball whistles echo still where the mile-long blazers fly?
Sitting here by the toll road gates, I wonder as I rest
Do the heavy, clanking, lonely freights still thunder a-way out West?
Have you seen the morning sun putting shadows on the run
As you were climbing out of some old reefer hole
High above the roaring wheels? Then you know just how it feels
To ride the tops and watch the prairies roll
I don’t know where I left it
Though it’s always on my mind
I ask the same old questions all the time
Is the old town still the same?
Does anybody know my name?
The years slip by like numbers on an endless high way sign