Well he met her in a airport bar She was drinking margaritas
Said she was heading down to Cabo He was heading home to Phoenix
From another sales convention Trying to sell ceramic heaters
It was a bad dream

She said she was from Memphis Where she dealt in ATMs
Home of Sun and Stax and Ardent But she'd never heard of them
Still he found he might be smitten With the fatale if not the femme
It was a bad dream

She left him with a number, said to call her up sometime
And I'd go so far to guess some of those digits might have been genuine
But he stored that slip away like he was going to build a shrine
He saw the future

He got his momma's keys for his daddy's Pontiac
Dad had checked in at the VA home and he wasn't coming back
He'd been down to triple A, got him a triptych and a LoJack
And it was blue skies

Take a little ride, you never know how far
You might just get away clean tonight
In an American car

He changed the oil, gassed her up, checked the lock on all the doors
He bought a sleeping bag, a gps, and a cooler full of Coors
He left the keys to his office up on top the chest of drawers
And he was gone

By midnight he'd seen a thousand Arizona pines
He'd flown around the world but never driven cross the state line
Lightning storm in the desert was like the hand of the divine
In the deep, dark night

Watched the sun come up out near the Cadillac Ranch
Caught some sleep in Amarillo but he woke up in a trance
Thought of stopping by his sister's, she was living down in Long Branch,
But he kept on driving

Nothing ever felt so free as that Oklahoma afternoon
Caught a radio station out of Little Rock playing nothing but Pat Boone
By the time he crossed into Tennessee, he was howling at the moon
His hands were shaking

Take a little ride, you never know how far
You might just get away clean tonight
In an American car

He called the number on the note the second he hit town
But the line was disconnected but that hardly slowed him down
Five minutes on the Google, yeah, he managed to track her down
He thought he was kinda clever

Meathead at the door of a house the size of an airplane hanger
Turns out she was busy, she'd been shacked up with a banker
Much to his surprise he couldn't find a trace of anger
He just got in that car and drove

Take a little ride, you never know how far
You might just get away clean tonight
In an American car