"Hauled It Away" by Kim Sorvig

Hauled It Away

(with apologies to John Prine & Woody Guthrie)

by Kim Sorvig

When I was a child, we lived near the mountains.
The place I grew up was in New Mexico.
Our house is still there, on the edge of a mesa,
but now only memories of a long time ago

Chorus: Daddy won’t you take me back to Santa Fe County,
to the mountains and mesas where paradise lay?
I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking --
Ten thousand tank trucks have hauled it away.

Sometimes we’d hike on down the arroyo
to the ruins of a pueblo beside an old spring.
My grandfather taught me the Indians loved nature.
My mom just said Johnny, now don’t touch a thing.

The oil companies came with a thousand huge oil rigs,
polluted the water and tortured the land.
Drilled for their oil till the land was deserted
and wrote it all down to the progress of man.

My dad tried to stop them, they took him to prison.
They took all the money he’d made in his life.
My mom she got sick from drinking well-water
and breathing the gas fumes she took down and died.

Daddy won’t you take me back to Santa Fe County,
to the mountains and mesas where paradise lay?
I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking --
Ten thousand oil trucks have hauled it away.