Out on the highway
on the old Tucker place
Past the faded red barns
and the old missle base

There's a brand new hotel,
built just last year
And it's really not far,
but it's really not near

The Bobs looked at prices
and decided they needed
a place not too fancy
the lot not too weeded

So I drove my white rental
down the straight asphalt track
Past a barbed wire fence
and the weathered old shack

Past the tall skinny pines
and gnarled oak trees
And way past the sign
for the new Applebees

I looked out the window
at the browns and the grays
And the light yellow greens
soon to be maize

They flashed past the windows
in a blurred country scene
Complete with the cattle
and the pigs that looked mean

The black and white cows,
well they just didn't move
They stomped muddy hoofs
and they snorted and stewed

They stood and they stared,
and they chewed and they chewed
They stood in the grass
and they moo'd with their mood

I stepped from the car
and into the gravel
And cursed out Obama
for making me travel

Its healthcare reform and ARRA!
That has me out here for almost no pay...

The lot was deserted
and smelled like manure
which must drift across
from Tucker's, I'm sure

He sold a small corner
of his vast fields of green
Now he's got cows on both sides
and this hotel in between

It's a Holiday Inn,
no wait, it's not that
It some kind of new place,
generic and flat

With carpets and curtains all shipped in pre-made
They're flimsy but cheap, just the right grade

It's a Stay-Inn-Motel
it says on the sign
And when the Bobs saw the prices
they thought it'd be fine

It's not, after all, Miami or Spain
Just a little hick town, without even a train

The front desk was spartan,
one phone and one clerk
and she stood there and waited
and smiled with a smirk

The Stay-Inn was empty
she said it was growing
And that would help Tucker
cut back on his mowing

With my bag and my laptop
and a hope the key fit
I trudged up to my room
like it was the Ritz

It had little shampoos
a cheap plastic alarm
And a full view of Tucker's
his cows and his farm

I went to the window,
looked out it and sighed
They Bobs aren't just cheap,
they're also quite blind

I'd find a way out, get past all those rules
That had me out here, a country-bound fool

Then I saw the old man,
on top of his rig
A green John Deere Lexus,
really quite big

He leaned back and he smiled
and winked up my way
And he turned and he laughed,
and I knew right away

That Tucker had been out here
alone with the birds
With only his pigs
and the cows and the turds

And for just a few acres
of grass and of dirt
he bought off the Bobs
and the Stay-Inn white shirts

So I look out the window
and think, "ain't it a bitch?"
how that old farmer Tucker
got himself rich

#old barns

Tucker's hotel