Guns Under The Counter

"Well, good for you.

But we have something too."

So said my aunt

A bowling alley and lunch counter

Filled with fellas on their lunch break

From the Western Electric plant at a slant across the street

And next door when So-and-So's men would come in, and the man himself very often

It was guns under the counter every time

Guns under the counter every time

Guns under the counter every time

And bowling on the second floor

Very often he was there himself

And I, of course, had a special small ball as a little girl,

And didn't I grow up, didn't I grow up to be captain of the Morton girls bowling team? I did!

Though I don't attach much importance to that now, or then

Then riding the old Garfield El downtown

And on up to State Street

And back to guns under the counter

Guns under the counter every time

Guns under the counter

And bowling on the second floor

I never liked Douglas park

And no one likes it now

But that's neither here nor there

There, or here

West of Crawford, where it is I stayed

Chicago straights alliterates

North, and south

I lived in the Ms

But it was down on the south side

Dr. Peter Pane and his brother had their doughnut factory

And I mention it now because

That one day

Now I wasn't there, we were in Davenport at that time

Some north side Irish bullets came zipping through that window

In Cicero

Never stand at a window

And past the counter

Looking for those men

Who had their guns behind the counter

And you could smell the boiled cabbage on those bullets

One of them managed to hit a young pinsetter in the leg

Wouldn't you know it

But luckily Panagoulis

Dr. Peter Pane

Was there to see to it

He took some special blackberry filling right out of his lunch bag

And applied it to the young man's wound

You see, Dr. Peter Pane was an interesting man

And an even more interesting doctor

As he would use no material or remedy that wasn't used in the manufacture

Of his doughnuts down on 82nd and Kedzie with his brother.

But he tempered this by the fact that he would rarely use ingredients

That didn't have some medicinal purpose

Or so he thought

Here in the doughnut factory

They have confectioner's sugar

So sweet it was caustic

And chocolate so bitter that it could kill typhus

Glazing so shiny

It could set back glaucoma

And filling so filling,

You didn't need stitches

The same special blackberry filling that was applied to the young man's wound

Blackberry filling that came straight from Dr. Peter Pane's lunch bag

We were in Davenport

With a big restaurant downtown

And I once kept a jackrabbit in the back yard

And I'd walk across the river to Rock Island to Greek school

On a fine fall day

And I'd look up at the sky

And down at the river

But Davenport changed its name to Hooverville

So to speak, and we had to go to Chicago to move in with my aunt