Peace of Mind

He drinks orange juice and vodka In the basement while she's talkin' To someone long distance For hours and hours on end And as he's slowly sippin' He thinks about his children And the heart attacks that youngest daughter's Always given him He ain't smoke no marijuana Since he got on with the railroad And he's been on with the railroad for A long and loathsome while But the day that he retires He'll smoke himself to China He'll leave behind his worries As he races through the skies The days are dark Down in the holler Waitin' for the sun to shine On the back You have been breakin' Tryin' to earn A peace of mind She sells Avon to her buddies And saves a little money On the makeup she's been using To hide away the years And she sits and watches TV Usually every evening That there ain't some kind of ballgame That her daughter has to cheer She sneaks menthols in the mornin' While her family's still a snorin' And as she burns the Eggos She looks back at her life That heart she broke in high school He is singin' on the Opry She wonders what the hell that she was thinkin at the time The days are dark Down in the holler Waitin' for the sun to shine On the back You have been breakin' Tryin' to earn A peace of mind Their youngest daughter Stella She's runnin' with this fella That he can not stand the thought of That he surely does despise He's told her he best never See the two of them together But it's hard to keep an eye on her When you're workin' all the time There are things he needs to tend to And the bills the bank keeps sendin' Lord the zeroes on the end Keep pushing further to the right Like a freight train haulin' sorrow And movin' ever onward Through the tunnel of forever To the never endin' light