Capo 5
Am
Load up the old Dodge truck
Fmaj7
We’ll leave what we can’t sell
Am
Nobody needs a sharecropper’s tools
Fmaj7
or a dust filled well
Am
Take you one last look around
Fmaj7
shed you one last tear
Am
For the broken plow, the broken dreams
Fmaj7 Am
And the life we’re leaving here
Pull the lines down tight
The kids can ride on top of the load
In the cool of the night
They can crawl underneath the tarp
To stay out of the cold
Eleven hundred miles of mountain and sand
We’ll cross ‘em tired and torn
If this beat up truck can carry us
Far enough away from the storm
Chorus:
F C
We’re going to California
G
There’s work there for a man
F C
Too proud to beg for charity
G F
Too poor to make a stand
G
Pray it’s just the land we’re losing
C F
Not my life’s blood that I leave
Am
On the handles of that broken plow
That haunts me in my dreams
A man at a roadside station
Don’t like dealing with my kind
He’d beat me out of my last dollar
And never look me in the eye
I heard ‘em call us Okies
Hell I don’t know what that means
But something tells me the promised land
Ain’t as promising as it seems
Chorus
Bridge: F Am
Fmaj7 Am
This restless road is full of strangers
Fmaj7 Am
They ain’t no stranger than I am
Fmaj7 Am
Hardened faces damn the dust and curse the wind
Am
That drove us from this life and home
Fmaj7 Am
We’ll never know again
Chorus
On the handles of my broken plow that haunts me in my dreams
