Used to be that I could see. A reason to be happy. 'Cause I was free. But then, recently it seems. I've been lettin' your mem'ry get to me. . Used to be that I could pretend.
When I was a boy in the days of the train. I'd sit by the tracks on a long summer day. And I'd wave at the brakesman, and he'd wave back at me. While the thunderclouds rolled out of East Tennessee.
The railroads, and the riverboats, that bred the mighty man. That we read about, and we dream about. The men who built this land. And the farmers and the lumbermen and the men who worked the mills.