#FortnightFridayMusic
Oct 03 2025
The prompt is #Ground

This song was written by Woody Guthrie and Martin Hoffman in 1948. It’s about a true story of a plane full of deportees going back to Mexico; the plane caught fire and crashed to the ground. No one bothered to even have names of the passengers, so the song makes up their names.

Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)

The crops are all in, and the peaches are rotten
The oranges are packed in the creosote dumps
They're flying us back to the Mexico border
To pay all our money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mi amigos, Jesus and Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
All they will call you will be Deportee

Now my father's own father, he waded that river
They took all the money he made in his life
Six-hundred miles to the Mexico border
They chased us like rustlers, like outlaws, like thieves

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
No all they will call you will be Deportee

The sky-plane caught fire, over Los Gatos Canyon
A big ball of fire, it shook all the ground
Who are these friends, who are falling like dry leaves
The radio said they were just deportees

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
No all they will call you will be Deportee

But we died in your hills, we died in your valleys
We died in your orchards, we died on your plains
We died on your deserts, we died in your treetops
Both sides of the river we died just the same

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
No all they will call you will be Deportee

© 1948