Lonely Street

Sometimes when I'm walking down this lonely street
Well, it sure don't seem like twenty years
Since I went walking down this lonely street
And the smell of perfumed ladies filled the air.

This street ain't got no name, dead end is in the river
And I lived where I hated life day by day
There wasn't nothing I could do to shake a cold night shiver
'Cause to move up Lonely Street you had to have some say.

Gambling is bad luck down on Lonely Street
And it sure ain't no place to be when a man gets sore
You know I killed a man and I paid all I can
With twenty years on a chain gang
For the flesh and the blood on that jailhouse floor.

Sometimes when I'm walking down this lonely street
I get caught up in a dream that won't let me go
And as the bright lights flash up and down this lonely street
My mind rolls back the years long time ago.

I see my baby stumblin' around with tears in her eyes
And as I reach out for her she falls on the floor
She mumbles through bloody lips about a bad man, robber, raper
And in my gut I know I got one to score.

The word was comin' down, down on Lonely Street
That the bad man was a dead man if he crossed my trail
Every night I'd walk up and down this Lonely Street
I get stinkin' drunk, and always in jail
One night they threw me in with a man they called the mangler
He was caught on the street makin' some old whore
I remember he was quite proud of that
So half-crazed I shot him
And I cried in the blood on that jailhouse floor.