He was born on a freight train
He was born on a cruise ship
He was born on an airplane
He was born in a taxi cab

He was born in a blizzard, far away in a manger
On the top of a mountain, in the mist of the jungle

He was born in the dessert when the lilacs were blooming
He was born in the ball park, high up in the grandstands

He was born on a surfboard
He was born in a backpack
He was born in the opera
He was born on a chain gang

He lived on the east coast
Grew up on the west coast
Made his home in the north
Settled down in the south

Quit school in the third grade with honours from Harvard
Played semi-pro baseball for a team in Havana

He worked in Chicago at the Bake-a-Lite factory
Dug clams in New Orleans and then in Miami

He worked on a farm, on a ranch in Wyoming
Shot buffalo for a while until the herds disappeared

He became a teacher and then an inventor
He invented the clam bake
He invented the back yard

He invented the porch
He invented the banjo
He invented the hammock
He invented the card game

He invented the night light
He invented the sick day
He invented the phonograph with a gasoline engine

He discovered the Mississippi and he gave it a name tag
And he filled it with garbage from the hull of a steamboat

He fled from the dustbowl
He fled from the city
He fled from his family
He fled from the farm

He joined the union
He marched with the Wobbles
He wore a red bandana and sang union songs

He was sent to the war
He fought with Mac Arthur
He marched into Paris
He liberated Rome

He marched into Washington and Selma, Alabama
He marched into Hollywood
He marched into television

He died in a plane crash, in a fight in a barroom
He died when his car crashed, in a tenement fire

He died saving children
He died broke and lonely and drunk in a gutter in the middle of nowhere

He died of a heat rash
He died of a bee sting
He ate poison mushrooms and that did him in

I went to an auction
Bought a trunk with his diary
From cover to cover
He must have been quite a guy