When I was a child my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Airdrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal 'til the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester Dam
I'll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin'
Just five miles away from wherever I am
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Airdrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal 'til the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester Dam
I'll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin'
Just five miles away from wherever I am
And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County?
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away
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There is an amazing amount of rural culture encapsulated in this couplet. While I don't know about any actual 'snake smell,' any wet, muddy place would be thought to have snakes.
Here are some of my thoughts related to the phrase:
Where the air smelled like snakes we would shoot with our pistols,
but empty pop bottles was all we would kill.
Snakes are serpents, and serpents are 'bad' (They tempted Eve and brought sin into the world!) and must be eliminated from God's creation. This is the sacred mission of every teenage boy entrusted with the 0.22 pistol from his Granddaddy's tackle box.
On a day when the fish 'ain't' biting, the pistol comes out and anything may become a target.
The choice of 'pop bottles' is interesting, and I suspect it was to keep the rhythm of the phrase. Even in the 1970s when this song was recorded, pop/soda bottles were returned/reused for a deposit. (Typically 5 cents) Shooting 'money' would have been unthinkable! (In my young world, .22 bullets were free...) We would gather every can, empty mayonnaise jar, and cast-off container available for future targets. There was always a stash in the back of the trunk or hiding under the front of the Jon Boat.
Killing a snake with a pistol? Never seen it happen. But we murdered thousands of cans & bottles. My favorites were Testors Model Paint bottles that were dried shut.
It's been years and years, but I grew up in Kentucky and have seen the World's Largest Shovel there in Muhlenberg County. The song is so specific -- which, to me, makes it seem more personal -- that it's a shame to get the name of the hill wrong.
(I've submitted a correction, but there's no telling whether it'll be corrected at all.)