Mama hated diesels so bad
I guess I knew it was something to do with death
First I ever saw her cry was after one of those things went by
Mama hated diesels so bad
I remember hearing those semis getting down
Mama hated diesels so bad
We lived on a high grade into town
I sure liked them white freight liners
But there was something in mama's eyes
When she catched me watching the road
Lord, a little bitty piece of her died
Mama hated diesels
So bad
I guess I knew it was something to do with death
First I ever saw her cry was after one of those things went by
Mama hated diesels so bad
As the years passed, and I got older, and Mama did too,
pretty soon she'd stop singing and laughing, and she'd hardly even eat.
I began staying up from home on the weekdays,
and I wouldn't come home from school till eight past nine.
I was too busy having some kind of fun, messing around with some gal,
or hanging around the local truck stop talking with my buddies
about all the big rigs that were all the time rolling in,
and talking about all the crazy places we'd never been, like California.
Well, one day the county sheriff came up to me and he said,
I found my mama wandering all by herself in the middle of the highway crying.
She was trying to hold things, Lord, to flag down one of them big old rigs
with a pocket handkerchief.
Well, that left me on my own.
I got a job unloading rigs down the local freight yard,
and pretty soon I had a rig of my own.
I left my hometown on the very first run to Frisco,
and that was three years ago today.
And I ain't been home in all that time since then until now.
Now it's me and the local preacher
standing in the graveyard grass
staring down the highway
watching those big boys pass.
He laid his hands on me,
and he prayed for quiet some time.
I can hardly understand the words he said
behind that highway's whine.
Then he handed me a faded photograph.
He said he found it in my mama's hand.
He said, son, I'm afraid that you in this old picture
was the best picture I've ever seen.

I looked down the stairs there and there
that your mama ever had.
I looked down at that picture.
It was mama and some guys
standing in front of a semi truck
just married, written on the side.
Mama hated diesels so bad.
I thought about that picture all the time.







Guess I knew it was somethin' to do with death
First I ever saw her cry
Was after one of those things went by
Mama hated diesels so bad
Mama hated diesels so bad