Album: Play Me Backwards (1992)

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• When we were young, we pledged allegiance
  Every morning of our lives
  The classroom rang with children's voices
  Under teacher's watchful eye
  We learned about the world around us
  At our desks and at dinnertime
  Reminded of the starving children
  Cleaned our plates with guilty minds
  
  The stones in the road
  We played like marbles in the dust
  Until a voice called for us
  To make our way back home
  The stones in the road
  
  When I was ten, my father held me
  On his shoulders above the crowd
  To see a train draped in mourning
  Pass slowly through our town
  His widow kneeled with all her children
  At the sacred burial ground
  And the TV glowed that long hot summer
  With all the cities burning down
  
  And the stones in the road
  Flew out from our bicycle tires
  Worlds removed from all those fires as we raced
  Each other home
  The stones in the road
  
  Stones
  
  And now we drink our coffee on the run
  Climb that ladder rung by rung
  We are the daughters and the sons
  But here's the line that's missing
  
  The starving children have been replaced
  By souls out on the street
  We give a dollar when we pass
  And hope our eyes don't meet
  We pencil in, we cancel out
  We crave the corner suite
  We kiss your ass
  We make you hold, we doctor the receipt
  
  Stones in the road
  Flew out from beneath our wheels
  Another day, another deal, before we get back home
  
  The stones in the road
  Leave a mark from whence they came
  A thousand points of light or shame
  Baby, I don't know
  
  Stones in the road
  
  Stones
  
  In the road Writer/s: MARY CARPENTER, MARY CHAPIN CARPENTER
  Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
  Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Comments: 5

• Arthur Fallowfield from Northants England.The funeral train was that of Bobby Kennedy which is pivotal to the song.
• Matt from Clveland, OhSince MCC wrote the music and lyrics, most people would consider it wrong to say that another artist's cover cover would be superior, considering that the writer of the song is presenting the song as it was intended. While there is nothing wrong with Baez's version, Carpetner's version surpasses it every way.
• Rich from Portsmouth, NhAs a Freshman I used to go down to the music room in our dorm--there was a scratchy scratchy copy of Farewell Angelina.
  Still, the stories + voice were poignant.
• Alexander from London, United KingdomNot so clear to this Limey although I suppose it should have been, especially as I'm one of those rare types who believe Kennedy was murdered by Oswald rather than some airy fairy fanciful conspiracy.
• Marina from Baltimore, MdThe "enigmatic funeral procession" was not due to the Vietnam War and not enigmatic at all. It was clearly a reference to the train carrying Robert Kennedy's body from New York to Washington. (Search YouTube for footage of the crowds that gathered spontaneously along the railroad tracks to pay homage, as Mary Chapin Carpenter's family evidently did). The widow who "kneeled with all their children" was Ethel Kennedy, then pregnant with her and RFK's 11th child. The second verse really works better with MCC singing it, because it recounts the tumultuous events of 1968 (both RFK's assassination and the riots following MLK's assassination) from the perspective of a 10-year-old child, which Mary was (Joan Baez was already a 27 year old folk goddess). The song is MCC's lament that her generation lost two important heroes that year, but it is also a plea to her peers not to sell out completely and abandon the ideals those men stood for.

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