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When I was a child, my family would travel
down to western Kentucky where my parents were born.
There’s a backwards old town that’s often remembered, so my times that my memories are worn.
And daddy, won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County,
down by the Green River where paradise lay?
Well, I’m sorry, my son, but you’re too late in asking.
Mister Peabody’s coal train just hauled it away.

Well sometimes we’d travel right down the Green River
to the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill,
where the air smelled like snakes and we’d shoot with our pistols,
but 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?
Well, I’m sorry, my son, but you’re too late in asking.
Mister Peabody’s coal train just hauled it away.

Well, the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel,
and they tortured the timber and stripped all the land.
And they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken, 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?
Well, I’m sorry, my son, but you’re too late in asking.
Mister Peabody’s coal train just hauled it away.
And daddy, won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County,
down by the Green River where paradise lay?
Well, I’m sorry, my son, but you’re too late in asking.
Mister Peabody’s coal train just hauled it away.

(written by John Prine)