Straight Time

(album: The Ghost Of Tom Joad - 1995)

Got out of prison back in '86 and I found a wife
Walked the clean and narrow
Just trying to stay out and stay alive
Got a job at the rendering plant, it ain't gonna make me rich
In the darkness before dinner comes
Sometimes I can feel the itch
I got a cold mind to go tripping 'cross that thin line
I'm sick of doing straight time

My uncle's at the evening table, makes his living running hot cars
Slips me a hundred dollar bill says
"Charlie you best remember who your friends are."
Got a cold mind to go tripping 'cross that thin line
I ain't making straight time

Eight years in it feels like you're gonna die
But you get used to anything
Sooner or later it just becomes your life

Kitchen floor in the evening tossing my little babies high
Mary's smiling but she's watching me out of the corner of her eye
Seems you can't get any more than half free
I step out onto the front porch and suck the cold air deep inside of me
Got a cold mind to go tripping 'cross that thin line
I'm sick of doing straight time

In the basement hunting gun and a hacksaw
Sip a beer and thirteen inches of barrel drop to the floor

Come home in the evening, can't get the smell from my hands
Lay my head down on the pillow
And go drifting off into foreign lands