Me an’ Earl was haulin’ chickens on a flatbed out of Wiggins
C
And we’d spent all night on the uphill side of thirty-seven miles
G
of hell called Wolf Creek Pass. Which is up on the Great Divide
G
We was settin’ there suckin’ toothpicks, drinkin’ Nehi
and onion soup mix
C
and I said, “Earl, let’s mail a card to Mother then send them
chickens
G
on down the other side. Yeah, let’s give ’em a ride.”
Chorus:
C
Wolf Creek Pass,
G
way up on the Great Divide
D G G/F# G
Truckin’ on down the other side
Well, Earl put down his bottle, mashed his foot down
on the throttle
and then a couple’a boobs with a thousand cubes
in a nineteen-forty-eight
Peterbilt screamed to life. We woke up the chickens
Well, we roared up offa that shoulder sprayin’ pine cones,
rocks, and boulders
and put four hundred head of them Rhode Island Reds
and a couple a’ burnt-out roosters
on the line. Look out below; ’cause here we go
Chorus
Well, we commenced to truckin’ and them hens commenced to cluckin’
and then Earl took out a match and scratched his pants
and lit up the unused half
of a dollar cigar and took a puff. Says “My, ain’t
this purdy up here.”
I says, “Earl, this hill can spill us. You better slow down
or you gonna kill us
Just make one mistake and it’s the Pearly Gates
for them eight-five crates a’
USDA-approved cluckers. You wanna hit second?”
Chorus
Well, Earl grabbed on the shifter and he stabbed her
into fifth gear
and then the chromium-plated, fully-illuminated genuine
accessory shift knob
come right off in his hand. I says, “You wanna screw
that thing back on, Earl?”
He was tryin’ to thread it on there when the fire fell
off a’ his cigar and dropped on down
sorta rolled around, and then lit in the cuff of Earl’s
pants and burned a hole in his sock
Yeah, sorta set him right on fire
Bridge:
C G
I looked on outta the window and I started countin’ phone poles
D G
goin’ by at the rate of four to the seventh power
C
Well I put two and two together
G D
and added twelve and carried five; come up with twenty-two
G
thousand telephone poles an hour
I looked at Earl and his eyes was wide, his lip was curled,
and his leg was fried
And his hand was froze to the wheel like a tongue to a sled
in the middle of a blizzard
I says, “Earl, I’m not the type to complain; but the time
has come for me to explain
that if you don’t apply some brake real soon, they’re gonna
have to pick us up with a
stick and a spoon.”
Well, Earl rared back, and cocked his leg, stepped as down
as hard as he could on the brake
and the pedal went clear to the floor and stayed there,
right there on the floor
He said it was sorta like steppin’ on a plum
Well, from there on down it just wasn’t real purdy:
it was hairpin county and switchback city
One of ’em looked like a can full’a worms; another one
looked like malaria germs
Right in the middle of the whole damn show was a real
nice tunnel, now wouldn’t you know
Sign says clearance to the twelve-foot line, but the
chickens was stacked to thirteen-nine
Well we shot that tunnel at a hundred-and-ten, like gas
through a funnel and eggs through a hen
and we took that top row of chickens off slicker than scum
off a Lousiana swamp
Went down and around and around and down ’til we run outta
ground at the edge of town
Bashed into the side of the feed store… in downtown
Pagosa Springs
Chorus
