Deportees (plane Wreck At Los Gatos) Lyrics - Arlo Guthrie

Lyrics by Woody Guthrie 

Music by Martin Hoffman 

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting 

The oranges are piled in their cresote dumps 

They're flying you back to the Mexico border 

To pay all your money to wade back again 

My father's own father, he wanted that river 

They took all the money he made in his life 

My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees 

And they rode the truck till they took down and died 

CHORUS 

Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita 

Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maris 

You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane 

And all they will call you will be deportees. 

Some of us are illega, and others not wanted 

Our work contract's out and we have to move on 

But it's six hundred miles to that Mexican border 

They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like theives. 

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts 

We died in your valleys and died on your plains 

We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes 

Both sides of the river, we died just the same. 

CHORUS 

A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon 

Like a fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills 

Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves? 

The radio says they are just deportees. 

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards? 

Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit? 

To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil 

And be called by no name except deportees?