There used to be a main street cross the country And that good ol' road would take you all the way From clark and ogden street up in chicago I was praised up somewhere in the middle Me and my daddy watch 'em roll through town I saw license plates from states I'd only dreamed of They just wave goodbye and put that hammer down Well the restless and the desperate The young ones and the old All together like a river flowed Lord I hope they got where they were going All the children the mother road The dust bowl okied stoppen in arizona To trade their family things on gasoline Just to find themselves outnumbered by the thousands Who'd already traveled down that road of dreams When the war was over all the baby booms Loaded up there cars and they grabbed their kids Just to count the miles and cuss those big freight liners Across twenty two hundred miles of route 66 Now the hot top is just ranch roads and runways And a way of life for some folks is all but gone You can almost see the ghost towns from the fast lane Of this super highway we're rolling on