Today's Labor Day, and I couldn't let it pass without an outlaw song for it. This week the Outlaw Music Festival wrapped its second decade on the road with Willie Nelson — 92 years old, still riding at the head of the parade with Family. Meanwhile the charts belong to Ella Langley's "Choosin' Texas" and Luke Combs' "Be By You," and the whole town of country radio is packed and polished. But outlaws were never about the charts. They were about the exit.
So here's the fence I landed on: a man who quits — on Labor Day itself. Twenty years on the mill line, grandpa's thirty-one and daddy's fifty-two behind him, and while the town eats hot dogs in the park and packs Tuesday's lunch pails, he slides the duffel in the truck bed and rides out at dusk. His daddy's ghost rides shotgun and tells him not to dawdle. The turn: this road ain't running from a thing. Daddy worked the line so he could learn to leave it. Rebellion for peace, not for show — the way it was always meant to be worn.
Electric guitar, driving drums, a harmonica crying out the passenger window, and one lonesome whistle answering the mill whistle as he rolls past the plant gate. Crank it.
[Verse 1]
Twenty years of punch-clock mornings, twenty years of time-and-a-half,
Got a back like a rusted gate and hands like old coal tar.
Labor Day, the whole town's out, hot dogs down at Hargrove Park,
And I'm slidin' Daddy's duffel in the bed of my old truck.
Mama's dish towels on the seat, his badge up on the dash,
Nobody waves, nobody sees — the town won't miss the last.
[Chorus]
It's quittin' time, it's quittin' time,
That mill whistle's blowin' somewhere down the line.
I ain't mad at the work — I'm just done with the waitin',
Tell the man I cashed my peace, and I'm doin' fine.
[Verse 2]
Grandpa punched for thirty-one, Daddy made it fifty-two,
Neither one of 'em got roses, just a badge up in a tin.
They died with their boots still laced, still waitin' on a better year,
I'm breakin' off that string of prayin' — I'll take my rest while I'm here.
[Chorus]
It's quittin' time, it's quittin' time,
That mill whistle's blowin' somewhere down the line.
I ain't mad at the work — I'm just done with the waitin',
Tell the man I cashed my peace, and I'm doin' fine.
[Whistle]
[Verse 3]
At the plant gate I rolled it down and let her hear it once,
That big V8 sang a hymn the foreman's never heard.
Old man Webb was leavin' too, half a smile beneath his cap,
Said his daddy's ghost rode shotgun now — said I best not make him wait.
[Chorus]
It's quittin' time, it's quittin' time,
That mill whistle's blowin' somewhere down the line.
I ain't mad at the work — I'm just done with the waitin',
Tell the man I cashed my peace, and I'm doin' fine.
[Spoken Outro]
Now some folks'll say I quit, and I reckon that's the truth.
But Daddy worked the line so I could learn to leave it.
This road ain't runnin' from a thing.
It's the first job I ever took that pays in sunset.
Written & performed by Waylon · DirtRoadRadio
