Johnny Cash
"Texas 1947" lyrics

Texas 1947

Being six years old
I had seen some trains before
So it's hard to figure out
What I'm at the depot for

Trains are big and black and smoking steam
Screaming at the wheels
Bigger than anything there is
Least that's the way she feels

Trains are big and black and smoking
Louder than July Fourth
But everybody's acting like
This might be something more

Than just picking up the mail
Or the soldiers from the war
Something even old man Wyman's
Never seen before

And it's late afternoon
On a hot Texas day
Something strange is going on
And we are all in the way

There are fifty or sixty people
Just setting on their cars
And the old men left their dominoes
And come down from the bars

And everybody's checking
Old Jack Kittrell checks his watch
And us kids put our ears
To the rails to hear them pop

So we already know it
When they finally said, "Train time"
You'd have thought that Judgment Day
Was rolling down the line

Cause things got real quiet
And mama jerked me back
But not before I got the chance
To lay a nickel on the track
Whoo

Look out here she comes
She's coming
Look out there she goes
She's gone
Screaming straight through Texas
Like a mad dog cyclone

Big and red and silver
She don't lay no smoke
She's a fast rolling streamline
Come to show the folks

I said, look out here she comes
She's coming
Look out there she goes
She's gone
Screaming straight through Texas
Like a mad dog cyclone

Lord, she never even stopped

She left fifty or sixty people
Still setting on their cars
Wondering what it's coming to
And how it got this far

And me I got a nickel smashed
Flatter than a dime
By a mad dog runaway
Red silver streamline
Train

Look out here she comes
She's coming
Look out there she goes
She's gone
Screaming straight through Texas
Like a mad dog cyclone

Big and red and silver
She don't lay no smoke
She's a fast rolling streamline
Come to show the folks

I said, look out here she comes
She's coming
Look out there she goes
She's gone
Screaming straight through Texas
Like a mad dog cyclone

Look out here she comes
She's coming
Look out there she goes
She's gone
Screaming straight through Texas
Like a mad dog cyclone

Authors: Guy Clark