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Tollbooth Man
words and music by Matt Abell
©2004 All rights reserved

 

Hey Mr. Tollbooth Man
If you get the blues you can
Count all the money in your hand
Mr. Tollbooth Man

My father was a tollbooth man
He fought three years in Japan
Came back unscathed
To this land where he was raised
And became a tollbooth man

But one gray December day many years ago
A big cement mixer skidded on the snow
With a Crash! Bam! Boom! Oh my...
There was a tollbooth in the sky
Spewing tollbooth wreckage on the road below

And when the smoke cleared and all the buzzards flew
Out crawled my Dad, minus a limb or a few
Rubberneckers gathered round
And the tokens were still raining down
Upon the Tollbooth Disaster of ‘52

Now don’t get me wrong
This is not a tragic song
Pop gets along admirably

He never has to beg
Cause he’s got wooden pegs
Where his arm and his legs used to be

Even drilled five holes in the peg on his arm
For the nickels and dimes, quarters, tokens, and pennies

Today, I am a tollbooth man
And Pop stays at home, reminiscing ‘bout Japan
I was a med school drop-out
But this is no cop-out
I’m from a long, long line of tollbooth clan

So, hey Mr. Tollbooth Man
If you get the blues you can
Count all the money in your hand
Mr. Tollbooth
Mr. Tollbooth
That’s me and my Dad
The Tollbooth Men

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