SOIL SCIENTIST'S LAMENT

Bob Lueth (via Howard Hobbs), Minnesota Geological Survey

Chorus:

Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be soils men

Don't let em have spades and dirty probe trucks

Let em be doctors and lawyers and such.

Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be soils men.

[Cause they're always] alone and they never stay home

alternate with they work all alone ...

Even with someone they love.

Soils men are easy to love but they're harder to hold

They'd rather dig in the dirt than seek after diamonds or gold.

Hillsides and valleys and steep sided ridges

These landforms they make up his game

Their soils and their phases, when he don't understand em

Oh, how they drive him insane.

Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be soils men

Don't let em have spades and dirty probe trucks

Let em be doctors and lawyers and such.

Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be soils men.

[Cause they're always] alone and they never stay home

alternate with they work all alone ...

Even with someone they love.

Soils men like battered old map boards and warm sunny mornings

Soils that dig easy moist with no stones or hardpan to fight

When he was thirty, he'd work to six-thirty

But at fifty it just ain't the same

Some lose their spades or stay the same grade.

Some die young, or just fade away