This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Airdrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal 'til the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester Dam
I'll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin'
Just five miles away from wherever I am
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Airdrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal 'til the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester Dam
I'll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin'
Just five miles away from wherever I am
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
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To bobwronski....I am from Muhlenberg County, and this song is actually very specific. Paradise is the actual name of the town on the Green River where a coal-burning power plant was built. As you're driving westward on the Western Ky Pkwy, the first thing you see as you cross the Green River going into Muhlenberg County is the Paradise power plant.
Signature Prine - Innocence of our childhood has left us. Although this really did happen to his parents' hometown, I can say my hometown is no longer there anymore, although it is physically.
Anyone have any thoughts on what "the air smelled like snakes" means? The rest of the song seems to be pretty literal. Is this line referring to something real and specific?
@bjohns7778 Snakes release a foul smelling musk as a defense. If you're in an area with a big population of snakes and startle one or get too close they will often musk, and you can smell it fairly strongly
@bjohns7778 (Please excuse the long reply. I am having fun recalling the first 23 yrs of my life in rural Mississippi.) <br /> <br /> There is an amazing amount of rural culture encapsulated in this couplet. While I don't know about any actual 'snake smell,' any wet, muddy place would be thought to have snakes. <br /> <br /> Here are some of my thoughts related to the phrase: <br /> Where the air smelled like snakes we would shoot with our pistols, <br /> but empty pop bottles was all we would kill. <br /> <br /> Snakes are serpents, and serpents are 'bad' (They tempted Eve and brought sin into the world!) and must be eliminated from God's creation. This is the sacred mission of every teenage boy entrusted with the 0.22 pistol from his Granddaddy's tackle box. <br /> <br /> On a day when the fish 'ain't' biting, the pistol comes out and anything may become a target. <br /> <br /> The choice of 'pop bottles' is interesting, and I suspect it was to keep the rhythm of the phrase. Even in the 1970s when this song was recorded, pop/soda bottles were returned/reused for a deposit. (Typically 5 cents) Shooting 'money' would have been unthinkable! (In my young world, .22 bullets were free...) We would gather every can, empty mayonnaise jar, and cast-off container available for future targets. There was always a stash in the back of the trunk or hiding under the front of the Jon Boat.<br /> <br /> Killing a snake with a pistol? Never seen it happen. But we murdered thousands of cans & bottles. My favorites were Testors Model Paint bottles that were dried shut.
this song was written by John about a friend of mine who was shot and murdered. very tragic. (i also happen to live near muhlenberg county. you can see the worlds largest shovel when youre headed east on the highway.)
@Halcyon
@Halcyon so you were friends with john prine's father? Liar
i love htis song - i sang it at hippie summer camp and it took me years to find out who sang it. it's so sad but beautiful at the same time
Industry, especially coal mining and logging, have ruined so many good and beautiful things. This song is probably about nostalgia for an old small town, which a coal company decided was a prime location for a mining operation.
powerofcitrus is correct, John Prine mentions this in an interview with Ted Kooser. John Prine's family was too from Paradise.
I love this song. I heard it as a child and it took years to find it again. I mistakenly thought that it was a John Denver song. Takes me back to when I was a kid, paradise to me.
The lyrics need a small correction: It's not Adrie Hill (even though it's pronounced that way), it's Airdrie Hill. Check it out via Google Maps -- Airdrie Hill is in Paradise KY.
It's been years and years, but I grew up in Kentucky and have seen the World's Largest Shovel there in Muhlenberg County. The song is so specific -- which, to me, makes it seem more personal -- that it's a shame to get the name of the hill wrong.
(I've submitted a correction, but there's no telling whether it'll be corrected at all.)