Back in Nineteen Twenty-Seven,
I had a little farm and I called that heaven.
Well, the prices up and the rain come down,
And I hauled my crops all into town --
I got the money, bought clothes and groceries,
Fed the kids, and raised a family.
Rain quit and the wind got high,
And the black ol' dust storm filled the sky.
And I swapped my farm for a Ford machine,
And I poured it full of this gas-i-line --
And I started, rockin' an' a-rollin',
Over the mountains, out towards the old Peach Bowl.
Way up yonder on a mountain road,
I had a hot motor and a heavy load,
I's a-goin' pretty fast, there wasn't even stoppin',
A-bouncin' up and down, like popcorn poppin' --
Had a breakdown, sort of a nervous bustdown of some kind,
There was a feller there, a mechanic feller,
Said it was en-gine trouble.
Way up yonder on a mountain curve,
It's way up yonder in the piney wood,
An' I give that rollin' Ford a shove,
An' I's a-gonna coast as far as I could --
Commence coastin', pickin' up speed,
Was a hairpin turn, I didn't make it.
Man alive, I'm a-tellin' you,
The fiddles and the guitars really flew.
That Ford took off like a flying squirrel
An' it flew halfway around the world --
Scattered wives and childrens
All over the side of that mountain.
We got out to the West Coast broke,
So dad-gum hungry I thought I'd croak,
An' I bummed up a spud or two,
An' my wife fixed up a tater stew --
We poured the kids full of it,
Mighty thin stew, though,
You could read a magazine right through it.
Always have figured
That if it'd been just a little bit thinner,
Some of these here politicians
Coulda seen through it.
I had a little farm and I called that heaven.
Well, the prices up and the rain come down,
And I hauled my crops all into town --
I got the money, bought clothes and groceries,
Fed the kids, and raised a family.
Rain quit and the wind got high,
And the black ol' dust storm filled the sky.
And I swapped my farm for a Ford machine,
And I poured it full of this gas-i-line --
And I started, rockin' an' a-rollin',
Over the mountains, out towards the old Peach Bowl.
Way up yonder on a mountain road,
I had a hot motor and a heavy load,
I's a-goin' pretty fast, there wasn't even stoppin',
A-bouncin' up and down, like popcorn poppin' --
Had a breakdown, sort of a nervous bustdown of some kind,
There was a feller there, a mechanic feller,
Said it was en-gine trouble.
Way up yonder on a mountain curve,
It's way up yonder in the piney wood,
An' I give that rollin' Ford a shove,
An' I's a-gonna coast as far as I could --
Commence coastin', pickin' up speed,
Was a hairpin turn, I didn't make it.
Man alive, I'm a-tellin' you,
The fiddles and the guitars really flew.
That Ford took off like a flying squirrel
An' it flew halfway around the world --
Scattered wives and childrens
All over the side of that mountain.
We got out to the West Coast broke,
So dad-gum hungry I thought I'd croak,
An' I bummed up a spud or two,
An' my wife fixed up a tater stew --
We poured the kids full of it,
Mighty thin stew, though,
You could read a magazine right through it.
Always have figured
That if it'd been just a little bit thinner,
Some of these here politicians
Coulda seen through it.
inviata da Bartleby - 10/6/2011 - 11:46
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Pubblicata in “Dust Bowl Ballads” pubblicato nel 1940
Parole e musica di Woody Guthrie.
In fuga dalla siccità e dalle tempeste di vento e di sabbia che hanno sommerso la loro fattoria un tempo fertile, una famiglia di agricoltori è in viaggio verso la California su di una vecchia Ford dove hanno imbarcato i figli e i loro pochi beni… I bambini hanno fame, ma le fette di carne sono così sottili che ci si potrebbe leggere il giornale attraverso, oppure vederci le facce di quei grassi politici responsabili di un tale disastro e della rovina di centinaia di migliaia di americani….
Durante i primi decenni del XX secolo le grandi e fertili pianure al centro degli USA furono coltivate intensivamente e dissennatamente, senza badare alla rotazione delle colture e senza mai dare respiro alla terra. Durante e dopo la prima guerra mondiale la produzione agricola fu spinta ben oltre la resistenza del suolo, che si inaridì e desertificò velocemente sotto i colpi degli aratri. All’inizio degli anni 30 il dissesto geologico era compiuto e i venti cominciarono a strappare via, letteralmente, la superficie della terra, alzando spaventose tempeste di sabbia. Nella “Dust Bowl”, la “conca della polvere”, compresa tra Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado e Nuovo Messico, mezzo milione di americani restarono senza nulla e cominciarono un esodo biblico verso ovest, verso la California. Lì, nel “paese del latte e del miele”, i migranti finivano invece a lavorare come schiavi nelle grandi tenute agricole: è la storia di "The Grapes of Wrath" di John Steinbeck/John Ford e della canzone di Bruce Springsteen The Ghost Of Tom Joad…
Si vedano anche, sempre di Guthrie, Dust Bowl Refugee, I Ain't Got No Home (In This World Anymore) e Tom Joad.