Talking Hard Work

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 hijacked 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 ninety seven of her kinfolk and Her blood relatives And I done just the same with eighty six people Who's just her friends and her neighbors I kissed seventy three babies and put dry pants On thirty four of em', well as others done this same thing Well there are a lot of other things just like this I held one hundred twenty five 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 fourteen loco broncos to a stand still And I let forty two hound dogs lick me all over seven times I's bit by hungry dogs and I was chewed all to pieces By rattlesnakes and water moccasins on two river bottoms I chopped and carried three hundred fourteen arm loads Of stove wood, one hundred nine buckets of coal Carried a gallon of kerosene eighteen miles over the mountains Got lost, lost a good pair of shoes in a mud hole And I chopped and weeded forty eight rows of short cotton Thirteen acres of bad corn, I cut the sticker weeds Out of eleven 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 nine barn lofts, cranked thirty one cars All makes and models, pulled three cars out of mud holes And four or five out of snow drifts I dug five cisterns of water for some of her friends Run all kinds of errands, played the fiddle for nine Church meetin's I Joined eleven separate denominations I joined up and signed up with seven best trade unions I could find, I paid my wages, a, dues six months in advance I waded forty eight miles of swamps and six big rivers Walked across two ranges of mountains and crossed Three deserts, I got the fever, sun stroke, Malaria, blue Moonstruck, skeeter bit, poison Ivy and the seven 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 three 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