Men walkin’ ’long the railroad tracks / Goin’ someplace, there’s no goin’ back / Highway Patrol choppers comin’ up over the ridge / Hot soup on a campfire under the bridge / Shelter line stretchin’ ’round the corner / Welcome to the new world order / Families sleepin’ in their cars in the southwest / No home, no job, no peace, no rest

Well the highway is alive tonight / But nobody’s kiddin’ nobody about where it goes / I’m sittin’ down here in the campfire light / Searchin’ for the ghost of Tom Joad

He pulls a prayer book out of his sleepin’ bag / Preacher lights up a butt and takes a drag / Waitin’ for when the last shall be first and the first shall be last / In a cardboard box ’neath the underpass / You got a one way ticket to the promised land / You got a hole in your belly and a gun in your hand / Sleeping on a pillow of solid rock / Bathin’ in the city’s aqueduct

The highway is alive tonight / But where it’s headed everybody knows / I’m sittin’ down here in the campfire light / Waitin’ on the ghost of Tom Joad

Now Tom said, “Mom, wherever there’s a cop beatin’ a guy / Wherever a hungry new born baby cries / Where there’s a fight ’gainst the blood and hatred in the air / Look for me mom I’ll be there. / Wherever somebody’s fightin’ for a place to stand / Or a decent job or a helpin’ hand. / Wherever somebody’s strugglin’ to be free, / Look in their eyes ma you’ll see me.”

Well the highway is alive tonight / But nobody’s kiddin’ nobody about where it goes / I’m sittin’ down here in the campfire light / With the ghost of old Tom Joad

[By Bruce Springsteen © Columbia Records, 1995]