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His daddy was an honest man, red dirt Georgia farmer |
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His mamma lived her short life having kids and baling hay |
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He had fifteen years, an ache inside to wander |
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He hopped a freight in Waycross, wound up in L.A. |
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Lord the cold nights had no pity on a Waycross Georgia farmboy |
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Most days he went hungry, then the summer came |
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He met a girl known on the strip as San Francisco's Mabel Joy |
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Destitutions child born of an L.A. street called shame |
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Growing up came quietly in the arms of Mabel Joy |
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Laughter found their mornings, brought a meaning to his life |
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Yes, the night before she left, sleep came and left that Waycross country boy with dreams of Georgia cotton and a California wife |
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Sunday morning found him standing 'neath the red light of her door |
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When a right cross sent him reeling, put him face down on the floor |
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In place of Mabel Joy he found a merchant mad merine, he growled that Georgia neck is red, but sonny your still green |
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He turned twenty-one in a gray rock federal prison |
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The old judge had no mercy for a Waycross Georgia boy |
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Starin' at those four gray, in silence he would listen |
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That midnight freight he knew would take him back to Mabel Joy |
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Sunday morning found him lyin' 'neath the red light of her door |
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With a bullet in his side he cried have you seen Mabel Joy |
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Stunned and shaken someone said she's not here no more |
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She left this house four years today |
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They say she's looking for some Georgia farm boy |