Pulaski

She was fresh out of college

The first one in her family to go

and California seemed like heaven,

Pulaski, Tennessee was her home

She worked on losing her southern accent

and turned her back on her Baptist ways

She bought some clothes that barely covered her fair skinned body,

Went to Nashville and caught a plane

The clouds rushed beneath her as the LA smog filled the air

She smiled when the airlock opened

and the Pacific breeze blew through her hair

She thought about the boys from Alabama

Who came into town every Friday night

and drank beer out of big glass quart bottles

and left their trail of blood and tears behind

She thought the men from California would be different

She'd grown up watching them on her TV

But the men she came to know in California

Left her longing for Pulaski, Tennessee

Good ideas always start with a full glass

and just breathing here can make a girl's nose bleed

Dreams here live and die just like a stray dog on a dirt road somewhere in Tennessee

The storefronts all filled up with eyeballs

As the policemen clear out the street

For a line of cars with their headlights burning

Driving slow through Pulaski, Tennessee