Paradise

When I was a child, my family would travel

Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born

And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered

So many times that my memories are worn

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenburg County

Down by the Green River where paradise lay

Well I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking

Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Well sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River

To the abandoned old prison down by Avery hill

Where the air smelled like snakes, we'd shoot with our pistols

But empty pop bottles was all we would kill

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenburg County

Down by the Green River where paradise lay

Well I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking

Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

And the coal company came with the world's largest shovel

And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land

Well they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken

And they wrote it all down as the progress of man

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenburg County

Down by the Green River where paradise lay

Well I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking

Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

When I die let my ashes float down the Green River

Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester Dam

I'll be halfway to heaven with paradise waiting

Just five miles away from wherever I am

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenburg County

Down by the Green River where paradise lay

Well I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking

Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away