The Passenger Hog
(from: Songs Of The Great Lakes)
She comes up the river, an' all in her wake
There's trouble she don't care to heed,
The water's kicked up an' the hawsers all break,
Why can't she come down in her speed?
She noses along like a grouchy old sow,
Then lets out her engines a cog,
An' all 'long the river she raises a row,
The clumsy old passenger hog.
The Northwest's a lady, the Northland's the same,
An' the others is mostly all right;
But the passenger hog is a portly old dame
That ain't at all nice or polite.
She hasn't no likin' fer freighters or those
That happens her pathway to clog;
An' the freighters they hates her from rudder to nose,
The ugly old passenger hog.
The hogs that are loaded with iron or wheat
They seem to be handy fer use
But the passenger hog is a mean one to meet,
An' when you're in dock she's the deuce.
She'd ought to be given a port all her own,
Where no one would care how she'd jog,
Where she'd leave us poor freighters an' others alone,
The ugly old passenger hog.
* a "hog" is lake parlance for a whaleback
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