My driftin' mem'ry goes back to the spring of '43When I was just a child in mama's arms My daddy plowed the ground and prayed that some day we could leaveThis run down mortgaged Oklahoma farm And then one night I heard my daddy sayin' to my mamaThat he finally saved enough for us to go California was his dream a paradise for he had seenLots of pretty girls in magazines that told him soCalifornia cottonfieldsWhere labor camps were filled with varied man with broken dreamsCalifornia cottonfields as close to wealth as daddy ever cameWell, almost everything we had was sold or left behindFrom daddy's plow to the fruit that mama cannedSome folks came to say farewell and see what all we had to sellSome just came to shake my daddy's handWell, the Model A was loaded down and California boundAnd a change of luck was just four days awayBut the only change that I remember seeing for my daddyWas when his dark hair turned to silver-greyCalifornia cottonfieldsWhere labor camps were filled with varied man with broken dreamsCalifornia cottonfields as close to wealth as daddy ever came
