Deportee (plane Wreck At Los Gatos) Lyrics - Other Voices, Too (a Trip Back To Bountiful) - Nanci Griffith

(Woody Guthrie - Martin Hoffman) 

The crops are all in 

And the peaches are rotting 

The oranges are stacked 

In their Creosote dumps 

They're flying them back 

To that Mexico border 

To pay all their wages 

To wade back again 

Chorus 

Goodbye to you Juan, goodbye Rosalita 

Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria 

You won't have a name 

When you ride the big airplane 

All they will call you 

Will be deportee 

My father's own father 

He waded that river 

They took all the money 

He made in his life 

My brothers and sisters 

Come working the fruit trees 

And they rode on the trucks 

'Til they took down and died 

Chorus 

Somos ilegales (Well some are illegal) 

Y mal recibidos (And some are not wanted) 

Se a caba el contrato (our work contracts out) 

Y de alli a caminar (And we've got to move on) 

Six hundred miles 

To that Mexico border 

They chase us like outlaws 

Like rustlers, like thieves 

Chorus 

We died in your hills 

And we died in your deserts 

We died in your valleys 

We died on your plains 

We died 'neath your trees 

And we died in your bushes 

Both sides of that river 

We died just the same 

The sky plane caught fire 

Over Los Gatos Canyon 

Like a fireball of lightning 

And shook all our hills 

Who are all those friends 

All scattered like dry leaves 

The radio says 

They are just deportees 

Chorus 

Is this the best way 

We can grow our best orchards? 

Is this the best way 

We can grow our good fruit? 

To fall like dry leaves 

And rot on my topsoil 

And beknown by no name 

Except deportee 

Chorus