Ray Wylie Hubbard purgatory road Mama comes in from the kitchen She tells me to fetch my brother She wipes her hands on her apron And says don't be late for supper I walk out on the front porch The sun's about to die It's still so hot the old dogs wouldn't bark Even if a car's to drive by There's a blue green Buick And a flat black Ford Jacked up off the ground Daddy's sitting on a stump and he's looking bewildered At the parts lying all around We ain't been no where at all since the Fairlane threw a rod Whatever it is is being damned to hell by my daddy and God Chorus: Some are here working on a passage to Heaven And others they can't carry that load A few are left singing the blues on Purgatory Road It is just a mile or so to the edge of town There ain't much of one here now since the factories closed down You got no jobs you got no people you got no businesses The only thing left is the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah Witness Mama she took me to church one time gonna get me baptized Further on down the road, something I realized. Now you might say it's contempt prior to investigation But nobody seems concerned About their Savior's procrastination. Chorus Now just past the cemetery with its tumped over tomb stones There's a little tavern that's called the Devil's Backbone It's got your distilled spirits and Tennessee Sour Mash And a little sign that says in God we trust, All others pay cash My brother's sitting on a chair in front of an old tweed amplifier He's playing bottle neck slide, steel on wire Now when his mother died and his daddy left my momma she brought him home And even thought he wasn't blood she raised him as her own So now he sings them blues on an old Gibson 160E And he don't even know what color he is cause he can't see. Chorus