While we are on the subject of hard work   I just wanted to tell you that, "I am a man who likes hard work"   I was born working and I worked my way up by hard work   I ain?t ever got no where, but I got there by hard work      Work of the hardest kind I been down and I been out   I been disgusted I been busted and I couldn?t be trusted   I worked my way up and I worked my way down   I been drunk and I been sober, I been baptized and hijacked      Worked my way in jail and I worked my way outta jail   Woke up a lot of mornin?s, didn?t know where I was at   The hardest work I ever done was, when I was tryin?   To get myself a worried woman to help ease my worried mind      I?m gonna tell ya just how much work I had to do   To get this woman I was tellin? you about, I shook hands   With ninety seven of her kinfolk and Her blood relatives   And I done just the same with eighty six people   Who's just her friends and her neighbors      I kissed seventy three babies and put dry pants   On thirty four of em?, well as others done this same thing   Well there are a lot of other things just like this   I held one hundred twenty five wild horses   And put saddles and bridles on more than that      Harnessed some of the wildest and craziest teams   In that whole country I rode fourteen loco broncos to a stand still   And I let forty two hound dogs lick me all over seven times   I?s bit by hungry dogs and I was chewed all to pieces   By rattlesnakes and water moccasins on two river bottoms      I chopped and carried three hundred fourteen arm loads   Of stove wood, one hundred nine buckets of coal   Carried a gallon of kerosene eighteen miles over the mountains   Got lost, lost a good pair of shoes in a mud hole   And I chopped and weeded forty eight rows of short cotton      Thirteen acres of bad corn, I cut the sticker weeds   Out of eleven back yards, all on account of 'cuz   I wanted to show her that I was a man and I liked to work   I cleaned out nine barn lofts, cranked thirty one cars   All makes and models, pulled three cars out of mud holes   And four or five out of snow drifts      I dug five cisterns of water for some of her friends   Run all kinds of errands, played the fiddle for nine   Church meetin?s I Joined eleven separate denominations   I joined up and signed up with seven best trade unions   I could find, I paid my wages, a, dues six months in advance      I waded forty eight miles of swamps and six big rivers   Walked across two ranges of mountains and crossed   Three deserts, I got the fever, sun stroke, Malaria, blue   Moonstruck, skeeter bit, poison Ivy and the seven year itch   And the blind staggers, I was give up for less, lost and dead      A couple of times struck by lightning, struck by Congress   Struck by friends and kinfolks Well as by three cars on highways   A lot of times in people?s hen houses, I been hit and run down   Run over and walked on knocked around, I?m just sittin? here   Now tryin? to study up what else I can do to show that women   That I still ain?t afraid of hard work