The other day, I heard a man tell a story
About his granddads' barn.
It was big and red and oh so fine,
I was really taken with his yarn.
He told about its bins' and hayloft,
I listened with great awe;
About its stalls and stanchions,
It seemed to be made without a flaw.
It got me to reminiscing
About my daddy's old barn.
It wasn't big or pretty
And it was made of rusted old iron.
It didn't have any stanchions,
It didn't have any box stalls.
Never in all of its many years,
Did we ever paint the walls.
But, when you're a little cowboy,
With your six guns strapped around your waist,
That old barn was like Heaven
You can't believe the crisis I faced.
Me and the masked man and Tonto
Sometimes, it was Roy or Gene,
We had many a gun battle
Though the outlaws were unseen.
One day my Dad took off the umbrella
From our old Minneapolis Moline,
I loved to play on that old tractor
And pretend it was my flying machine.
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But, anyway, back to the umbrella
He took it off and put it in the shed.
I can hardly remember what it looked like,
But, I believe it was faded red.
I'd get that old umbrella out and play with it
And I'd bail off that old tractor wheel.
But after a while, that finally got old,
It ceased to give me a thrill.
I needed me a higher place to jump from,
To bail out and slowly float down.
From the peak of that old barn, I pictured myself
As I gently touched the ground.
With my trusty parachute in my hands
I launched myself into thin air.
Little did I know, when I took that leap,
That I never had a prayer.
Down like a turd in a cistern,
Is the phrase that comes to mind;
As I plunged to Earth from out of the sky,
My trusty parachute did unwind.
Did you ever drop a ripe watermelon
And listen to the sound it makes?
That was the sound of me and my parachute,
I was lucky that I didn't have any breaks.
But, I tell you I've learned me a lesson,
And in my lifetime I have learned a few,
But, this one I've tried to live by,
To never get higher than fifteen two
- Lee Jones
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