I'm a town in Carolina, I'm a detour on a ride   For a phone call and a soda, I'm a blur from the driver's side   I'm the last gas for an hour if you're going twenty-five   I am Texaco and tobacco, I am dust you leave behind      I am peaches in September, and corn from a roadside stall   I'm the language of the natives, I'm a cadence and a drawl   I'm the pines behind the graveyard, and the cool beneath their shade   Where the boys have left their beer cans I am weeds between the graves      My porches sag and lean with old black men and children   Their sleep is filled with dreams, I never can fulfill them   I am a town      I am a church beside the highway where the ditches never drain   I'm a Baptist like my daddy, and Jesus knows my name   I am memory and stillness, I am lonely in old age   I am not your destination I am clinging to my ways I am a town      I'm a town in Carolina, I am billboards in the fields   I'm an old truck up on cinder blocks, missing all my wheels   I am Pabst Blue Ribbon, American, and 'Southern Serves the South'   I am tucked behind the Jaycees sign, on the rural route   I am a town, I am a town, I am a town, southbound