[Intro]
A-boom! Chk-chk
A-boom! Chk-chk
A-boom! Chk, chk

[Verse 1]
Uncle Walt?
Hey, Uncle Walt. Do you hear me?
What do you want, boy?
Your field hands are all gone, Uncle Walt
How are we gonna that cotton?
Well, I don't reckon we will, son
I guess we'll get in touch with those fellers from New York who come down here awhile back and sell 'em those trees over there and I reckon we'll let 'em build a cotton mill here
Well, Uncle Walt let 'em build a cotton mill there
And one day, like a giant swooped his right hand down, he swept away all the pine trees and he built a three-story-high, red-brick, cotton-picking cotton mill

[Verse 2]
While he was at it, they swept away Uncle Walt too
He never did know much about legal things like contracts and fine print
I was just a kid then, and one of the earliest memories of my childhood was the loom
The loom, with the shuttle going back and forth, making cotton into cloth
And it sounded like:

[Chorus]
A-boom! Chk-chk
A-boom! Chk-chk
A-boom! Chk, chk, chk
[Verse 3]
1930 came along: violence, strikes
Three dollars a week just wouldn't get it
A plug of chewing tobacc-er, couple pounds of flour and some fatback and molasses
When they went back to work, they was making six dollars a week
But not until Clarence Carter - Clarence was Walt Carter's boy, lived next door - not until Clarence Carter got on this newfangled thing called an elevator and it fell with him in the cotton mill
'Course, they brought Clarence home
Then, they took him away again
And Clarence'll never have to worry about that:

[Chorus]
A-boom! Chk-chk
A-boom! Chk-chk
A-boom! Chk, chk, chk

[Verse 4]
He won't hear it anymore
Then there was Sarah that lived down the street
At 14 years old, when Sarah went to work in the cotton mill, breathing that lint
Man, it's worse than a coal mine
Six dollars a week
And every time Sarah come out of that cotton mill, she'd be coughing
Something like:
(*long, wheezing cough*)

[Verse 5]
Well, the big year: 1932
Roosevelt, Big Deal, New Deal
Everybody's gonna have a fortune, like A-models and things
Another strike in the cotton mill
Machine guns on the roof and the National Guard throwing cigarettes down like they was going out of style
And all the young kids in the neighborhood picking 'em up and smoking 'em, when they could beat the men to 'em
[Verse 6]
They finally fixed that elevator, after it fell with a National Guard lieutenant
I guess everything works out for the best after all
And all the time we were living there, listening day and night to that sound
That awful sound

[Chorus]
A-boom! Chk, chk
A-boom! Chk, chk
A-boom! Chk, chk, chk, chk