Talking Peace Corps Blues
Michael Denison - 1965

(Just strum along in 4/4 time, key of G, regular chord progression, and talk)

Now I joined the Peace Corps to get away,
              I’m sick and tired of the U.S.A.
But now that I’ve been on the roam,
              I’m gettin’ lonesome, wanna go home.

Nobody even speaks English here, whole place is full of foreigners!

The house I live in is kinda nice;
              It’s out in the middle of a field of rice.
There’s birds on top and snakes underneath,
              And a tiger on the front porch, pickin’ his teeth.

              He’s waitin’ for me to come out. Been there two weeks. I ain’t comin’ out. Dumb cat . . . .

The school I teach in’s a dandy, too.
              It’s up on stilts in a field of goo.
It’s nice and airy, though, the screens are all gone,
              So’s the equipment and the hong naam

              Pawn shop on the corner’s doin’ a booming business. I’ll teach the front office to cut our salary.

The kids I teach are smart as a whip,
              They study real hard and don’t give me no lip.
              We sing folk songs and do the ramwong,
And take turns lookin’ for the Viet-cong.

              Saw one the other day, too. In the third row.

If Miss Gomez could see me now,
              She’d be as proud as a littered sow.
I use my TEFL books every day,
              And all those handouts she gave away. . .

              You see, my Sears catalogue nor my Reader’s Digest have come yet and paper’s kind of scarce up here. I ain’t proud, I don’t have to use that soft tissue stuff.

They sent me a booklocker full of good things,
              Like ‘The Miracle of Vitamins” and “Burl Ives Sings”
              Along with a book that tells real clear
How to cook all the things you can’t buy here

              As a bonus, I got two novels by Francis Parkinson Keyes who, I’m told, compares favorably with the best works of Frank G. Slaughter.

My first aid kit came the other day
              And I started using it right away.
The polymagma’s now long gone
              And I might not be able to finish this song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . .