Ballad Of Copper Junction A Journeymans Lament

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[Verse 1]

My father laid the trees down
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He broke them with his hands
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Last year he died and left me nothing
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But this frame I fill

A union card
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And a pair of workman's hands


[Verse 2]

And I was brought up in the north of here
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In Copper Junction town
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Where there ain't no longer
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Any copper in the ground
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Just the reservation land
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Empty logging towns

Paper mills
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And drawers of hand me downs


[Verse 3]

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In 1964, I was seventeen years old
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I got caught up in the draft
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I did like I was told
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And spent a pair of too long years
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Too young to be so old
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Well, it don't take too much sense
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Just to come in from the cold
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Guess I never did
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I guess I never did


[Verse 4]

Back home it was the bottle
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Back to work with my old man
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But we didn't get on so good
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And it wasn't like we planned
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And the last I saw of him
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So drunk he couldn't stand
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And that wagon's rolling empty


[Verse 5]

So I got myself cleaned up
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I was married for a while
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But that ring just kept on falling off
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And sometimes I wonder why
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But now it's years ago and faded

From whiskey and from rye
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And I wonder if it matters


[Instrumental]

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[Verse 6]

My father laid the trees down
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He broke them with his hands
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And now I'm just like him
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I got nowhere left to stand
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And that wagon's rolling empty

And I've got nothing but the frame I fill
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A union card
      F                 D
And a pair of workman's hands