"Paradise" lyrics

When I was a child my family would travel
In Western Kentucky where my parents were born
There's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn

Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg county
Down by the Green River where paradise lay?
I'm sorry my son but you're too late in asking
Mr Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Airdrie Hill
Where the air smelt like snakes, we'd shoot with our pistols
Empty pop bottles was all we would kill

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg county
Down by the Green River where paradise lay?
I'm sorry my son but you're too late in asking
Mr Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber, stripped all the land
Well they dug for their coal 'til the land was forsaken
And we wrote it all down as the progress of man

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg county
Down by the Green River where paradise lay?
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
'N I'll be half way to heaven, with Paradise waiting
Just five miles away from wherever I am

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg county
Down by the Green River where paradise lay?
I'm sorry my son but you're too late in asking
Mr Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
Mr Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
Mr Peabody's coal train has hauled it away