East Houston Blues - Rodney Crowell

So I grew up hungry

And I grew up hard

Took the streets and alleys

For my own backyard

I got a break and enter

On my list of crimes

Been before the judge

One too many times

East Houston Blues

Scale of one to ten

About a nine and a half

Is where it’s always been

It’s in the drinking water

And in the bar ditch mud

East Houston Blues

Gets in a poor boy’s blood

I learned to drink and drive

When I was twelve years old

My uncle Fireball Stoddard

Rest his ragged soul

He run a '54 Ford

Up and down the drag

Sipping Early Times

Straight from a paper bag

East Houston Blues

Picture Dowling Street

And Navigation Boulevard

Where the crossroads meet

Three sheets in the wind

Brick shy of a load

East Houston Blues

Down a nowhere road

Forty dollar boots

Big Bangora hat

Stolen money from an inside job

Maybe think about that

I’m a Third Ward child

My mother’s only son

Which means exactly nothing

Without a loaded gun

I don’t believe in love

This I guarantee

If there’s a God above

He’s got it in for me

East Houston Blues

What you want me to say?

I need to find me a woman

To keep the wolves at bay

Keep my head on straight

Make me toe the line

East Houston Blues

Ain’t no friend of mine

So you understand

That of which I speak

I’m a worried man

On a losing streak