When I was a child my family would travel
Down to western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that my mem'ries 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 child but you're too late in askin'
Mr Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Well sometimes we traveled right down the Green River
By the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with the pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill
And daddy won't you take me back...

Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovels
They tortured the timber and they stripped all the land
Well they dug for the coal till the land was forsaken
Then we wrote it all down as the progress of man
And daddy won't you take me back...
Mr Peabody's coal train has hauled it away