when i was a child my family would travel down to western kentucky where my parents were born and there s a backwards old town that s often remembered so many times that my memories are worn and daddy won t you take me back to muhlenberg county down by the green river where paradise lay well i m sorry my son but you re too late in asking mister peabody s coal train has hauled it away well sometimes we d travel right down the green river to the abandoned old prison down by airdrie hill where the air smelled like snakes we d shoot with our pistols but empty pop bottles was all we would kill and daddy won t you take me back to muhlenberg county down by the green river where paradise lay well i m sorry my son but you re too late in asking mister peabody s coal train has hauled it away then the coal company came with the world s largest shovel and they tortured the timber and stripped all the land well they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken then they wrote it all down as the progress of man and daddy won t you take me back to muhlenberg county down by the green river where paradise lay well i m sorry my son but you re too late in asking mister peabody s coal train has hauled it away when i die let my ashes float down the green river let my soul roll on up to the rochester dam i ll be halfway to heaven with paradise waitin just five miles away from wherever i am  and daddy won t you take me back to muhlenberg county down by the green river where paradise lay well i m sorry my son but you re too late in asking mister peabody s coal train has hauled it away1