Cadillac Desert *** Dan Flowers - electric guitar, vocals; Jeanie Flowers - acoustic guitar, lead vocal; Jim DeFazio - bass, vocals; Mark Tusler - drums, vocals

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Just read Steinbeck - or better yet, talk to somebody who was really there - I did

The only thing I can recall of Oklahoma
Is a cloud of dust trailing down the road
And my mama holding onto my hand
On a flatbed truck heading out to California
With a hundred dollars and a dream of the promised land

But that abandoned boxcar just outside of Barstow
Didn't even come close to the clapboard cottage
That we'd built up in our minds
And when grampa died that winter
'Cause we couldn't keep out the rain and cold
We loaded up our truck, but we left our dreams behind

California, oh are you waiting there for me?
California, where you can have all you can see
I came out here with a lot of dreams and my family
But in California not even your dreams are free

Papa left one day, said he'd heard there was work 'round Wasco
But he never came back, though we waited for months
And we never really found out why
There were rumors that he'd hopped a freight for Colorado
But my daddy wouldn't leave us here, so I think he died

California, oh are you waiting there for me?
California, where you can have all you can see
I came out here with a lot of dreams and my family
But in California not even your dreams are free

Oh, at night we sleep in a nice little house
With a white picket fenced-in yard
And we all go out and we work for a living
But none of us works too hard
Then I wake up in the morning with the sun streaming in
Through the holes in the roof, and I know that it's been
Just a dream

The only thing I can recall of Oklahoma
Is the taste of the dust as we rumbled down the road
And I didn't really understand
That we were heading for a brand new life in California
With our soon to be broken dreams of the promised land

California, oh are you waiting there for me?
California, where you can have all you can see
I came out here with a lot of dreams and my family
But in California not even your dreams are free
Yeah, in California not even your dreams are free