Story Behind The Song

I live in what used to be a remote farm community, that now is just another suburb in progress. The corn fields are rapidly becoming subdivisions, er excuse me, planned communities. The sense of space looking across a big field is gone once the houses and malls arrive. This is a pure song in the folk tradition.

Song Description

"We're living on last year's cornfield, rooftops far as the eye can see" Does it ever stop? Twenty five years after Joni observed the paving of paradise, it would appear not.

Lyrics

In the dim and distant past when the glaciers were around
The ice and the rocks flattened the hills on down
Left a land so rich where the tall grasses grow
Winters were so harsh when the north winds do blow
For untold generations the buffalo did roam
The Indians thought that it would always be their home

When the white settlers hit the land they called the Grand Prairie
The plows went through the sod in the farm communities
And the land brought forth corn and the land brought forth beans
In a type of abundance that is rarely ever seen
So now to feed the nation seemed to be the destiny
Of the people on the land we call the Grand Prairie

But the people kept on coming the big city grew and grew
Until it was too crowded and everybody knew
That the newest of the suburbs where a man can be free
Where the earth meets the sky out on the Grand Prairie


Now the smallest house is taller than the largest tree
Shingles highlight of the view across the Grand Prairie
And we're living on last year's cornfield Rooftops far as the eye can see
When the land no longer sees the plow that's the end of the Grand Prairie