And now, song lyrics

This was written by Jay Munly and performed by Slim Cessna's Auto Club (Munly also has a solo version with slightly different lyrics). I'm posting it here because there are no SCAC lyrics online, it's a great song, and I finally managed to completely decipher it. The phrase "best-built dam" was the hardest part for me to make out.

This Is How We Do Things in the Country

The first and last time I met her
We was children seven years by
She held my hand so softly
She was perfectly shy
My family went to wander
Six years in foreign lands
I returned last evening
To take her by the hand

Long about break of morning
I met with my girl
She looked at me with crossed eyes
So I sent her from this world
I cracked her with my shovel
She bent my shovel's blade
She still had them crossed eyes
As I dug her crooked grave

This is how it's always been
This is how we do things in the country
This is how it's always been
This is how we do things in the country

Long the next morning
The rains they came down
Washed away that crooked grave
Washed her straight into town
She nudged gainst Judge Henry
She looked at him with cock-eyes
Judge Henry he's as thick as the best-built dam
But even he knew she'd passed on by

Long late that evening
I sought her kinfolk out
I asked to sing at her funeral
They said son we'd be proud
My song it began to bend and break
As her box went in the ground
They dug her a brand new hole
With walls true up and down

This is how it's always been
This is how we do things in the country
This is how it's always been
This is how we do things in the country

Late in the dark time
I went creepin round the town
Into every pine-board shed
All their tools I did found
I put them in my vice grip
Turned em to the left and right
Returned them to their toolsheds
Straightened out this town with might

Now when they hoe a garden
It angles to the northeast
When they raise a new building
It leans askew and Lord does it creak
Now when they shape a new tool
From the ones he's made unstraight
See every which way they do cross it up
Yes these crooked graves they will be our fate

This is how it's always been
This is how we do things in the country
This is how it's always been
This is how we do things in the country