Interpret:

Alison Krauss

Album:

Paper Airplane

I grew up in the scantling yards
Of Wheeling West Virginia
A wheelhouse cub looking for an open door


In the packet ways a Sweeney
Wed the keel of my Bonita
Just two months from her timbers til she moored


I paid the fare in billet 
On her maiden voyage to Vicksburg
And talked my way to hand the tiller on the course


In her planks I carved a notch and sealed 
The vow “Be my Bonita”
And her dowry was my life between the shores


I was born with rouging ways
And she steered me like a woman
From the port calls and the bawds that lead me stray


The calliope serenades
Made the old towns come running
And the boys would gamble shards to pull her chains


The striker’s boast would fain me loss
About the wrecks the shoals were keeping
And how the old girl’s got poor Billy’s ransom saved


On the lake at Bistineau
She set the wharf at Dixie
With a thousand bales of cotton on her main


As the great raft disappeared
The watermark went sinking
And she was stuck right hard, a listing on the bank


With the furnace still a blaze
I stood my last upon her
Then climbed the prow and took a landsman’s trade


“A derelict now Milady” 
Said the watch log I’ve concorded
“Have the bosun sound us eight bells for the change”


Cause I was born with rouging ways
And she steered me like a woman
From the port calls and the bawds that lead me stray


The calliope serenades
Made the old towns come running
And the boys would gamble shards to pull her chains


And I would take to wider walks
So the gin I stopped a drinking
At three scores aloft this crooked frame


The striker’s boast would fain me loss
About the wrecks the shoals were keeping
And how the old girl’s got poor Billy’s ransom saved