San Francisco Mabel Joy

His daddy was an honest man, red dirt Georgia farmer

His mamma lived her short life having kids and baling hay

He had fifteen years, an ache inside to wander

He hopped a freight in Waycross, wound up in L.A.

Lord the cold nights had no pity on a Waycross Georgia farmboy

Most days he went hungry, then the summer came

He met a girl known on the strip as San Francisco's Mabel Joy

Destitutions child born of an L.A. street called shame

Growing up came quietly in the arms of Mabel Joy

Laughter found their mornings, brought a meaning to his life

Yes, the night before she left, sleep came and left that Waycross country boy with dreams of Georgia cotton and a California wife

Sunday morning found him standing 'neath the red light of her door

When a right cross sent him reeling, put him face down on the floor

In place of Mabel Joy he found a merchant mad merine, he growled that Georgia neck is red, but sonny your still green

He turned twenty-one in a gray rock federal prison

The old judge had no mercy for a Waycross Georgia boy

Starin' at those four gray, in silence he would listen

That midnight freight he knew would take him back to Mabel Joy

Sunday morning found him lyin' 'neath the red light of her door

With a bullet in his side he cried have you seen Mabel Joy

Stunned and shaken someone said she's not here no more

She left this house four years today

They say she's looking for some Georgia farm boy