This story's about an ex-truck driver, bein' named John James Wall, before his friends blackballed him and nicknamed him Pinball. I gathered this story from a truck stop in Gallipolis, Ohio, when this old feller––I'd say 70 years old––asked me to buy him a strong cup of coffee and a piece of good apple pie

I bought the coffee and the pie for the ol' feller, and I'm awful glad I did, because he winked his eye, and smiled, and says, "My, my!" Then I noticed in a few minutes, with tremblin' hands, he pushed a part of his pie and coffee back, and looked at me with tears runnin' down his poor ol' weather-beaten cheek, and this is what he said...

I'm an old hog-hauler, I drove a big truck

I shot the pinball machine, but it caused me bad luck

Put all I ever made in a pinball machine

I'd get four catty-cornered, then I'd miss the 16

I wish they'd outlaw them ol' pinball machines

Many weeks they have caused me to live on sardines

Last time I called my wife on the phone

The first thing she says, "John, when can you come home?"

"I've got a load of hogs, and they've got to go

I'll see you when I get back from Chicago"

She says, "John, you know I love you, I wished you wouldn't go

Send your babies some money, they're hungry and cold"

The last thing she said, and then she hung up

"John, you give up my lovin', and just to drive an old truck"

I made my trip on to Chicago

I was gone two months, 'cause I shot up my dough

When I got home, my family was gone

The best friend I had a-rung my telephone

He says, "John, I guess you wonder about your babies and wife

Pneumonia got your babies, and your wife took her life"

I lost all my friends, I can't sleep for bad dreams

I dream about an old truck and a pinball machine

I never will forget the last words that that old man said

"Oh Lord, if I could live my life over," and then he fell dead

They tell me John was a clean-cut young man at the age of nineteen

But now he's in his grave, a victim of a big old truck

And a pinball machine