Slavin' away      Slavin' away   All for you my love   And i've nothin to show for it   Cept my dusty old book full of pictures   A dusty old book   Tell me a story   Bout how i wasn't so tired   From my slavin' away      I ran off   Put on corduroy knickers that i got from the coal shovelin' kid   And hitchhiked in a rickety old ford   Hitchhiked in a rattly old norton side car   Down strange roads   In the purrin' rain, as the poet put it   On up to st. Paul   On a cold day in the middle of the fall      And they picked me up for not wearin a dress   And suspended my sentence   If i wore somethin with a strap that was pink   And i scrubbed up on somebody's sink   So now i catch the canadian pacific   And not be too specific, just somewhere up north   And get into lumber and slumber when i like   And in the spring ride down into cheyenne on my bike      I looked out the window   And i stuck my head out the door   And the snow was melting so slow...   And the sky was light but so gray...      Slavin' away   And all for nothin' my love   Cookin and washin in the morning   And startin at 9:25   I assemble six boxes of little plastic christmas trees   And put in the blue leds   On kid toy cell phones with borg batteries   And then on to the sewing machine   Stick the labels on purple t-shirts   And the arms on pull-over jumpers for the uk      Slavin' away   All for you my love   And i've nothin to show for it   I've nothin to show for it      I could see her lookin in the mirror at me   Wonderin' if it wasn't plain for everyone to see   Nothin ever seemed to turn out how it might be   I could see her doubting now that all had gone and went   That anything she got was equal what that she'd spent   That she never seemed to get back what that she'd lent      Anyway they did have a son   And by the time he was married and i played at his wedding too at holy trinity   I was choir director myself   Rehearsals in the basement twice a week   I demanded we'd be in peak condition   And everything seemed to be going quite well   I got along well with the priest...