The Twisted Ballad of Farmer Bill

(Guitar-pickin' tune not unlike "Hot Rod Lincoln")

Well, you pays your nickel and you takes your chances,
and I'm not one for wild romances,
But I've gotta admit this gal still does something for me.

When she takes out her teeth
and her faded glass eye,
and pulls the false leg from the stump of her thigh,
man, I get excited by all the possibilities.

She rattles when she breathes,
so she don't talk well,
and the hooks on her hands have a funny smell,
but I can tell exactly what she's trying to say.

By the look in her eye
and the twitch in her hips
I can see the kiss there behind the foam on her lips
as she gurgles out her love for me every day.

Well, love is blind
(and in her case half-true
with her real eye brown and her false one blue)
But I can see past all the scars and the holes in her face.

Way back when
I can remember a time
before her fateful dance with the farm combine
When all her limbs were attached and in the right place.

A beautiful girl
any man would want
And plenty men told her at her restaurant
She was a full-time waitress and a part-time cheatin' heart.

She found a rich man
gonna get a new life
hit the big city and quit being the wife
of a poor dirt farmer who couldn't bear to part.

She came to tell me
while I worked the field
I begged and pleaded- she refused to yield
Pulled the ring off her finger and threw it on the combine's floor.

She turned to go,
but then she slipped
The ring on the floor sent her on a trip
With a horrified glance she tumbled out the door.

Well, the old combine's
an unforgiving thing
and she'd never would have fell if it weren't for the ring
Still, I can't help but wonder at the irony of it all.

She got chewed up
when she fell in
The machine jerked and seized with a mighty din
and there wasn't very much left of her after the fall.

She lost her hands
she lost a leg
She got cracked and whipped like a scrambled egg
But I didn't panic, and no, I didn't grieve.

Her eye was gone
and her looks gone, too
I told myself, "if she pulls through,
I can console myself with the fact that she'll never leave."

I love more now
than I loved her then
when I had to compete with her side boyfriends
because I know I have her all to myself.

She doesn't cheat
and she'll never stray
She just sits there drooling at me everyday
and I keep all her old parts in jars up on the shelf.

Well there's my story
and the story of my wife
For better or for worse, we're together for life.
But don't you go and start to pity me.

I have a little secret
if the truth be told
I kept it from my wife, but it was hard to hold.
(pause - music stops)
(spoken)I've always had a "thing" for amputees.

(music slowly fades to maniacal laughter. Large farm equipment can be heard faintly in the background.)