The Coming And The Going Of The Trains - Merle Haggard, The Strangers

I am just an Indian and once this was my land

Now it’s been taking from me by the coming of a white man

And the anger makes my blood run hot and heavy in my veins

Everytime I think about the coming of the trains.

The day was hot and dusty in the year of '69

As we heard the whistle blowing somewhere down the line

That was the year I rode with Frank and Jesse James

As we waited for the coming and the going of the trains.

The drought hit west Texas the ground was cracked and dry

We just had to have some water or our crops would surely die

The railroad shipped this water till we finally got some rain

And I thanked God for the coming and the going of the trains.

I lived behind these iron bars I’m a prisoner doing time

And I’ve heard that midnight freight pass at least the thousand times

And I spent my time a walking to the door and back again

And marking down the coming and the going of the trains.

I’ve always been an engineer and trains’re all I know

Ah they don’t want me anymore and they say that I’m too old

But my cabin at the crossing sorta helps to ease my pain

For I just had to feel the coming and the going of the trains.

The trucks and planes’re faster now and the railroad is too slow

And they just came and told me that my railroad has to go

The hands that built the railroad through sweat and blood and pain

Will sign the final papers of the going of the trains.

And I have seen the coming and the going of the trains…