Draggin' the Line

To me this song seems like taking time to enjoy the simple things in life, taking a break from the burdens of life and stop to smell the flowers.

Well, it does sound pretty hippie-ish, but I don't think it's about using drugs. Back in the day--let's just say WAY back in the day--"dragging the line" was an idiom for slogging through your daily life.

I think the song is about the virtues of living a simple life. Making a living the old, hard way (i.e., working with his hands rather than sitting at a desk), taking life as it comes, not being too busy or caught up with getting rich to stop and enjoy the simple things (we ain't got much but what we got's ours; hugging trees; peace of mine), with a minimum of encumbrances (only his dog for companionship).

As far as Sam eating purple flowers, I always got this picture of the songwriter going, "What can we rhyme with 'We ain't got much but what we got's ours'?" and the answers getting sillier and sillier till someone just said, "What the hell, let's put in the dog eating flowers," while everyone just totally cracked up. I think that line is a throwaway and not pivotal to the song at all. It is pretty funny though.

Some of the younger people have been mixing "dragging the line" with "doing lines" but that's unfortunately way off the mark. Though how could they know? The concept of "doing lines" didn't come into the vernacular until the early 80s, when the yuppie/former hippies had haircuts and nice ties and were busy being reaganites. For the most part they had lost any concept of dragging the line, which as someone correctly pointed out means doing the daily grind, pushing your own boulder up the hill each day, doing what you have to do to survive. The point here, for us, was that you could still see the beauty of the daily grind by keeping your eyes and your heart open while you were doing it. Yeah.

I suddenly felt like a hippie listening to this song and it made me feel 'so fine'. :)

I love this song, it's one of those come home and chill tunes you know, but you don't think to listen to. I think the song is about drugs though. I mean come on, it was relased in 1971, the end of the 1960's (hippie era). God knows when the song was actually written. IF you look at it from the 'hippie' view, you understand the whole...tree hugging, dog eating flowers thing. You just feel fine loving nature and 'draggin' the line' a metaphor for 'doing lines' aka snorting the white stuff.

If you still don't get what i mean when i say snorting the white stuff, then I feel for you.

it's definitly about cocaine. I agree wiht sixedheart.

It's obviously about cocaine and drugs in general. I love walking down the street and listening to this song on my headphones. Even though it's not the intention, I kind of see dragging the line as going through the daily grind, and just doing your own thing. And the sound and flow of the song reflects it perfectly.

I thought it was about how the hippies thought about the concept of tug-of-war. It's war, and they are against war, so why is it being praised here?

to me ne way it's about trippin on something be acid, mushrooms, mescalin, paint chips whatever the line that your draggin is the line of reality and also it may be cocaine but lsd also came in powder form

This song totally captures the 60's way of thinking. It's essentially laid back, hippie stoner-rock, and I think it's about the daily grind AND drugs. You know what they say; "If you can remmeber the 60's, you weren't there." I do love this song- gets me feeling all kinds of perky.

Draggin the line means pulling a plow. This is the greatest farming song of all time. In all weather, free spirit, huggin a tree, just a perfect song!!!! Thank you Bob King and Tommy James!~