[00:01.00]Alison Krauss & Union Station - Bonita and Bill Butler
[00:02.00]
[00:03.00]Album: Paper Airplane (2011)
[00:04.00]Songwriter: Sidney Cox
[00:05.00]
[00:07.26]I grew up in the scantling yards of Wheeling West Virginia
[00:13.92]A wheelhouse cub looking for an open door
[00:19.00]In the packet ways a Sweeney wed the keel of my Bonita
[00:25.65]Just two months from her timbers til she moored
[00:31.08]I paid the fare in billet on her maiden voyage to Vicksburg
[00:37.23]And talked my way to hand the tiller on the course
[00:43.04]In her planks I carved a notch and sealed the vow "Be my Bonita"
[00:49.19]And her dowry was my life between the shores
[00:54.32]
[00:54.85]I was born with rouging ways, and she steered me like a woman
[01:01.68]From the port calls and the bawds that lead me stray
[01:06.52]The calliope serenades, made the old towns come running
[01:13.39]And the boys would gamble shards to pull her chains
[01:18.28]The striker's boast would fain me loss, about the wrecks the shoals were keeping
[01:24.98]And how the old girl's got poor Billy's ransom saved
[01:30.04]
[01:54.60]On the lake at Bistineau, she set the wharf at Dixie
[02:01.15]With a thousand bales of cotton on her main
[02:06.39]As the great raft disappeared, the watermark went sinking
[02:12.74]And she was stuck right hard, a listing on the bank
[02:18.47]With the furnace still a blaze, I stood my last upon her
[02:24.98]Then climbed the prow and took a landsman's trade
[02:30.59]"A derelict now Malady" said the watch log I've concorded
[02:36.56]"Have the bosun sound us eight bells for the change"
[02:41.55]
[02:42.19]Cause I was born with rouging ways, and she steered me like a woman
[02:48.86]From the port calls and the bawds that lead me stray
[02:53.75]The calliope serenades, made the old towns come running
[03:00.89]And the boys would gamble shards to pull her chains
[03:05.89]And I would take to wider walks, so the gin I stopped a drinking
[03:13.01]At three scores aloft this crooked frame
[03:17.66]The striker's boast would fain me loss, about the wrecks the shoals were keeping
[03:24.26]And how the old girl's got poor Billy's ransom saved
[03:29.78]