Papa Was a Traveler

Papa was a traveler, down his road, I have led
Be sure to keep your shoulders underneath your head
Papa was a traveler, sleeps in no one bed
Papa was a traveler, we never have met

And he may be in New York or San Francisco
It's been ten long years since my Papa's been home
And I'm still waiting, still waiting all alone
Soon it'll be fifteen years and my Papa's still gone

Well my Mama, she told me, she said, "Son one day
If your Papa's still gone, and if the clouds are still grey
Well I promise you'll meet him either here or away
And all the kids in the neighborhood will come out to play"

So on the very day that I turned eighteen
My Mama made me promise to keep my nose clean
And then she gave me the address where my Papa may be
And then she gave me twenty more addresses where my Papa may be

So I packed a change of clothes and fifty dollars in cash
I poured a little whiskey in my father's old flask
And Mama drove me to the station and bought me my pass
And I was off to meet my Papa at last

Well the train was empty, I sat in a window seat
Traveled through the country, those golden fields of wheat
And I had never seen the world not built on concrete
And I could feel that beauty from my head to my feet

Well I took a sip of whiskey to have me a treat
And I wrote down the date on top a blank sheet
And then a man sat down next to me and started to speak
And the life I once knew was so quickly obsolete

But when the day was done and the sun had setted
He leaned over and he asked me, "Boy where are you headed?"
"Well I'm off to find the man from which I've descended"
And, "Find yourself first", was all he recommended
And not asking him more was all I ever regretted

I first stopped in Detroit with no time to waste
I walked out of the station and went looking for the place
The air was so thick you could almost taste
A working man's pants held by an old shoelace

Smokestacks smokin' and engines ran
In a dive bar on second, my story began
I walked in the place, Papa's picture in hand
And I asked everybody, "Have you ever seen this man?"

Well I asked everybody and I drank there all night
They were closing down and turning off the lights
When I asked one more man and he said that he might
It's been years since he's seen him, but if he comes again he'll write

Time passed by as I traveled the states
Stories filled my journal with their coinciding dates
My pockets grew empty from those railroad rates
But I couldn't stop moving so I started hopping freights

Well I had no luck, yet still no fail
Till winter came and brought snow and hail
And then they caught me one night while out riding the rail
There was no one there to pay my bail
So I spent two months in Texas County Jail

Well when I got out I went looking and I got hired
Making working wages to run my bones tired
And on cocaine the other men were wired
So I quit that job 'fore I could even get fired
Because I promised my Mama and I ain't no liar

Well I had enough money to pay for my fare
From that Dallas heat to the Colorado air
And the people I'd meet and the stories we'd share
None of them did believe that my Papa was out there

In-between the mountains the tracks did curl
From a station in Boulder, I stepped onto Pearl
And it wasn't 15 minutes before I met that girl
We danced all night we twisted and twirled

I got drunk off my whiskey she got stoned from her rum
And then she asked me from where did I come
I said, "I'm not wanted darling but I am on the run
And I'd like to live everywhere underneath the sun
So if you must know darling that's where I come from"

Well we fell in love and took her car
Until months went by and she had gone too far
And then I drove her back home and although it was hard
She said two kids having fun is all we really are

And it's a mourning, and a sobbing, and a crying shame
But there's a kid in Boulder with my last name
And his life story and mine are the same
So I'm sorry my son for causing that pain
But I promise you'll meet your Papa one day

And in the Rockies, in the Rockies, where the buffalo roam
I spent the night in the cold and I slept all alone
And it sounds like a song and it reads like a poem
It's hard to realize when you no longer have a home

I finished the list I cried and I moaned
I called my Mama on the old pay phone
She told me, "One more place son, look before you come home"
And all these years, I should have known

There were leaves on the ground and the weeds overgrown
I walked up and down that path all alone
The land was quiet and the birds had flown
I saw my Papa's name etched on a marble headstone
He had died the same year I was born

So I left a rose above him and I started anew
All this time that was wasted with nothing more to do
I thought of the places that I had passed through
And in the road I found the father that I never knew
My Papa was a traveler and now I am too