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