PARADISE
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Info: Written by John Prine and recorded on a 1971 album, the song refers to an actual town called Paradise, now defunct due to lack of industry.
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Lyrics:
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 my memories are worn.

Chorus:
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

Sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill

Chorus

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
And they wrote it all down as the progress of man

Chorus

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

(Chorus x 2)