(Talking) Hard Luck Blues

Talkin' Hard Luck Blues - Woody Guthrie

While we are on the subject of hard work

I just wanted to tell you that I am a man

Who likes hard work

I was born working and

I worked my way up by hard work

I ain't ever got no where

But I got there by hard work

Work of the hardest kind

I been down and I been out

I been disgusted I been busted

And I couldn't be trusted

I worked my way up and I worked my way down

I been drunk and I been sober

I been baptized and hyjacked

Worked my way in jail and I worked my way outta jail

Woke up a lot of mornin's

Didn't know where I was at

The hardest work I ever done was

When I was tryin' to get myself a worried woman

To help ease my worried mind

I'm gonna tell ya just how much work

I had to do to get this woman I was tellin' you about

I shook hands with 97 of her kinfolk and her blood relatives

And I done just the same with 86 people

Whos' just her friends and her neighbors

I kissed 73 babies

And put dry pants on 34 of em' well as others

Done this same thing well

There are a lot of other things just like this

I held 125 wild horses and put saddles

And bridles on more than that

Harnessed some of the wildest

And craziest teams in that whole country

I rode 14 loco broncos to a stand still

And I let 42 hound dogs lick me all over

7 times I's bit by hungry dogs

And I was chewed all to pieces

By rattlesnakes

And water moccasins on 2 river bottoms

I chopped and carried 314 arm loads of stove wood

109 buckets of coal

Carried a gallon of kerosene

18 miles over the mountains

Got lost - lost a good pair of shoes in a mudhole

And I chopped and weeded 48 rows of short cotton

13 acres of bad corn

I cut the sticker weeds out of 11 back yards

All on account of

Cuz I wanted to show her

That I was a man and I liked to work

I cleaned out 9 barn lofts

Cranked 31 cars

All makes and models

Pulled 3 cars out of mud holes

And 4 or 5 out of snow drifts

I dug 5 cisterns of water for some of her friends

Run all kinds of errands

Played the fiddle for 9 church meetin's

I Joined 11 separate denominations

I joined up and signed up with 7 best trade unions

I could find

I paid my wages

Um

A

Dues 6 months in advance

I waded 48 miles of swamps and 6 big rivers

Walked across 2 ranges of mountains and crossed 3 deserts

I got the fever

Sun stroke

Malaria

Blue

Moonstruck

Skeeter bit

Poison Ivy and the 7-year itch and the blind staggers

I was give up for less

Lost and dead a couple of times

Struck by lightning

Struck by Congress

Struck by friends and kinfolks well as by 3 cars on highways

A lot of times in people's hen-houses

I been hit and run down run over

And walked on knocked around

I'm just sittin' here now tryin' to study up what else

I can do to show that women

That I still ain't afraid of hard work