Clinchfield Rail

The soot so thick and black I could cut it with my knife And it's been four months, or maybe more, Since I've seen my pretty wife I pray I'm home before too long, though that's prob'ly just a dream, To meet my newborn son who's waiting there for me Every day is longer than the one that came before Carving earth and moving rock 'til my body can take no more Two hundred miles ahead to reach that Carolina line Got to get that coal to Spartanburg from the old Virginia mine Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise I'll make it to see my next sunrise And I'll be home by Christmas time If the Clinchfield Rail gets through The Appalachian sky so blue, the sun it burns so bright We sit around the campfire singing lonely songs at night But each night there's one more missing who didn't last the day Falling to their deaths someone else keeping their pay They're buried in silent graves beneath eighty feet of fill They gave their lives to make a living and now they never will Still a hundred miles left ahead to reach that Carolina line Got to get that coal to Spartanburg from the old Virginia mine Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise I'll make it to see my next sunrise And I'll be home by Christmas time If the Clinchfield Rail gets through For these tunnels and these bridges I've sacrificed my life And it's been four years, or maybe more, Since I've seen my pretty wife The boom towns start to look the same As we drive on through these hills Through the back country land with black diamonds And smoke from moonshine stills The Blue Ridge Mountains stand before me, the promise that they hold To connect this Appalachian land to the rest of the world Only fifty miles left ahead to reach that Carolina line Got to get that coal to Spartanburg from the old Virginia mine Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise I'll make it to see my next sunrise And I'll be home by Christmas time If the Clinchfield Rail gets through