Capo 5
Load up the old Dodge truck
Weâll leave what we canât sell
Nobody needs a sharecropperâs tools
or a dust filled well
Take you one last look around
shed you one last tear
For the broken plow, the broken dreams
And the life weâre leaving here
Pull the lines down tight
The kids can ride on top of the load
In the cool of the night
They can crawl underneath the tarp
To stay out of the cold
Eleven hundred miles of mountain and sand
Weâll cross âem tired and torn
If this beat up truck can carry us
Far enough away from the storm
Chorus:
Weâre going to California
Thereâs work there for a man
Too proud to beg for charity
Too poor to make a stand
Pray itâs just the land weâre losing
Not my lifeâs blood that I leave
On the handles of that broken plow
That haunts me in my dreams
A man at a roadside station
Donât like dealing with my kind
Heâd beat me out of my last dollar
And never look me in the eye
I heard âem call us Okies
Hell I donât know what that means
But something tells me the promised land
Ainât as promising as it seems
Chorus
Bridge:
This restless road is full of strangers
They ainât no stranger than I am
Hardened faces damn the dust and curse the wind
That drove us from this life and home
Weâll never know again
Chorus
On the handles of my broken plow that haunts me in my dreams