East Texas Red Lyrics - Woody Guthrie

Down in the scrub oak timber of the Southeast Texas Gulf 

There used to ride a brakeman and a brakeman double tough 

He worked the town of Kilgore and Longview nine miles down 

Us trav'lers called him East Texas Red the meanest bull around. 

I rode by night and by broad daylight in wind and snow and sun 

I always seen little East Texas Red sporting his smooth running gun 

The tale got switched down the stems and main and everybody said 

The meanest man on the shiny rails was little East Texas Red. 

It was early in the morning and along towards nine or ten 

A couple of boys on the hunt of a job stood in the blizzardy wind 

Hungry and cold they knocked on the doors of the working folks around 

For a piece of meat and a spud or two to boil a stew around. 

Red he come down the cinder dump and he flagged the number two 

He kicked their bucket over a bush and he dumped out all their stew 

A traveler said, Mister East Texas Red you better get everything fixed 

'Cause you're gonna ride your little train just one year from today. 

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Red he laughed as he clumb the bank and swung aside of a wheeler 

The boys caught a tanker to Seminole and west to Amarillo 

They struck them a job of oil field work and followed a pipe line down 

It took them lots of places till the year had rolled around. 

On one cold and wintery day they hooked them a Gulf bound train 

They shivered and shook with dough in their clothes to see Kilgore again 

Over hills of sand and hard froze roads where the cotton wagons roll 

On past the town of Kilgore and on to old Longview. 

With their warm suits of clothes and overcoats they walk into a store 

They pay the man for some meat and stuff to fix a stew once more 

The ties they walk back past the yards till they come to the same old spot 

Where East Texas Red just a year ago had dumped their last stew pot. 

The smoke of their fire went higher and higher a man come down the line 

He ducked his head in the blizzardy wind and waved old number nine 

He walked off down the cinder dump till he come to the same old spot 

And there was the same three men again around that same little pot. 

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Red went to his knees and he hollered, 

Please don't pull that trigger on me. 

I did not get my business fixed but he did not get his say 

A gun wheeled out of an overcoat and it played the old one two 

And Red was dead when the other two men set down to eat their stew.