Hill County, Texas, nineteen hundred and four
There ain't any lights, and there ain't much noise
Just a hundred lonely miles of hills and muddy streams

Coke Robert Stevenson, just 16 years old
Sleeps on the ground, the moss is wet and it's cold
But he's got books and a lantern to warm his dreams

From Brady to Junction, he's got freight to move
He's got a wagon, six horses, and a sackful of food
He's savin' his money, gonna buy himself a big piece of land

He's been workin' since he's nine, digging ditches, herding steer
Reading and learning, getting smarter every year
One day he'll build a house on a hill with his own two strong hands

The day he turns 18 he gets a job at the bank.
Those books he's been reading, he's got them to thank
It don't take long before he's the head cashier

Then in Junction and Kimball they need hard-top roads
And Coke is the smartest man that anyone knows
So he reads some more and learns to be an engineer

He's a self-taught lawyer by the time he's twenty-nine
He won't defend a man if he thinks a man is lying
Big city lawyers study every word he writes

As a Judge he's respected by Defense and Prosecution
He believes in the Bible and the Constitution
His reputation spreads like the blue smoke rising from his pipe

Now the very next year the party has a plan
They come to him and ask him, please run for Congressman
He says “I don't care much for politics so just let me say to you...

I'll run if you want me but I won't be bought.
I won't make lots of promises, no fancy talk.
I'll just follow my conscience, that's all I can do”

He's the Governor of Texas by '41
He reforms the schools and prisons, and before he's done
He's got Texas in the black, and he never goes back on a promise

So in 1948 they run him for the Senate
Gonna be a real dogfight but they're bettin' he can win it
Against a man named Lyndon Johnson, one more politician with no conscience

Coke loses that election, no chance he can win
In Wells and Zapata, the dead vote Johnson in
Forged names and ballots stashed in Box 13

Coke goes home to Junction where he spends his days
With his wife and his daughter where the horses graze
Back to the hills and the gushing springs

Then in 1952 there's a note from Huntsville Prison
“If you're looking for the truth I can tell you where it's hidden,
Smithwick's my name and before I die there's a story I need to tell”

He says “I worked for the men who stole your election
I watched as they wielded coercion and deception”
But by the time Coke reaches Huntsville, Smithwick hangs dead in his cell

EPILOGUE

Seems there's never time enough to look at the proof
Too few honest men to search for the truth
The years roll on and oh what a tangled web they weave
Johnson's in the White House, in over his head
There's a war in Vietnam, sixty thousand boys are dead
While Coke Stevenson and the rest of us can only watch and grieve.

© 2016 JOEPIKETMUSIC ASCAP