A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

Hard Times lyrics
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Listen

There was an old Montana man
Who did not own a gun
Though he kept a banana in his pocket
Which fooled most everyone.

He stayed out of arguments
And political analyses
By pretending he was deaf
And had a bad disease.

He stayed away from politics
And he did not share his views
With anyone except close friends
When they were soaked in booze.

O THESE ARE HARD TIMES HARD TIMES TIMES
SOMETIMES I WANT TO LAY DOWN MY HEAD AND CRY

But one day he got in trouble
As everyone must do
He said something that sounded red
To somebody who was blue

They took away his banana
They tied him to his horse
They said are you right-wing or left
And the old man said of course.

And they tied him to an anthill
Under the burning sun
And they covered him with syrup
And he cried, What have I done?

O THESE ARE HARD TIMES HARD TIMES HARD TIMES
SOMETIMES I WANT TO LAY DOWN MY HEAD AND CRY

He was an agnostic Christian Muslim
Libertarian Hindu
With socialistic tendencies
Though a capitalist through and through.

A Baptist Universalist
Fundamentalist Buddhist Jew
And a member of Oprah's Bookclub too

He'd spent his life listening
And nodding his head
And not making trouble
Life is hard enough, he said

O THESE ARE HARD TIMES HARD TIMES HARD TIMES
SOMETIMES I WANT TO LAY DOWN MY HEAD AND CRY

They let him off the anthill
And they wiped off the syrup
And brought his horse around
And put the old man in the stirrup.

And he became a wanderer
In the rain and mist
A pilgrim of civility
Among the dogmatists.

And if you ask me what I think
Of that wishy-washy man
I'd say, my friend, it's a hard life
And we do the best we can.

O THESE ARE HARD TIMES HARD TIMES HARD TIMES
SOMETIMES I WANT TO LAY DOWN MY HEAD AND CRY