Jenrose: Music
1979
(Jenrose and the Kentucky Bootleggers)
The year Magic Johnson and Larry Bird faced off
in the NCAA championship and went pro…
It was sometime in September 1979
And I was just a child when you wrote these words
And all the years gone by, and all that I remember from that time –
Michigan had the Magic, Indiana had a new state Bird
And it was time for them to fly…
You left Texas for Kentucky in 1956
When Grandad took the job in Lexington
Went to school to change the world
Fell in love with a small town girl
Made plans to start a family
Joined the Young Republicans
But times were changing much too fast
Did it hit you like a shotgun blast?
Tell me, was it JFK or Vietnam?
All I know is all they say
You changed your tune somewhere along the way
And by the time I came along
You were singin’ a whole new song (you were singin’)
Bye bye bye bye Miss American Pie
Now I’m just a scavenger
Sitting on the basement floor
Digging through your boxes and your files
I’m not trying to turn back time, just trying to reconcile
The questions of a woman with the memories of a child
And I find photographs in black and white
Treatises on wrong and right
All the dreams and schemes of a younger man
Tall tales of Georgia chain gangs, 8-track tapes of Don McLean
And words from poems and love songs scribbled in your hand
(things like) I heard the steady rain whispering your name
When he joined the team in ‘75
It was the same year his daddy died
And some say that’s where Larry got his drive
Just a stubborn man made up his mind
He was worth more dead than he was alive
But the lesson that he taught was Never settle for surviving
Now I’m standing in this basement, this letter in my hand
Going back in time, trying to understand
How I came to be this woman, how you came to be that man
Alone in that apartment with that pistol in your hand (singin’)
And if you take my hand my son
All will be well when the day is done…
But it was sometime in September 1979
And I was just a child when you wrote these words
And all the years gone by, and all that I remember from that time:
Michigan had the Magic, Indiana had a new state Bird
And it was time for them to fly…