Lucky Mud: Music

White Boys

(Lucky Mud)

2009-12-09

Mike McKinney

"I graduated from Pasco High School, Dade City, Florida, not long after the storm of integration finally disrupted 200 years of shame. Most of my school days were spent before that time, when all the kids were white and the town was divided by a line that was strictly enforced.
It was also a time of insane boredom, when all stores closed before dark and there was nothing for us 'good kids' to do but drink and drive, and hang out in the orange groves in a society of teenagers.
it's a different world, but some things never change."

Under a yellow moon
Over the orange grove
Some white boys played a game
Back when the Sunshine State
Was still segregated
And the 'Good Old Boys'
Wanted it to stay that way
But the Vietnam War
And Brown versus the Board of Education
Changed everything
Yet, on that night
Some white boys played
A strange and dangerous game

And the young girls sat
On the hoods of their cars
And they watched them
Race on by
In big Chevys and Fords
And they were drinking Schlitz by the quart
And they were bored
Out of their minds
If mommies and daddies knew
What their children do
In the light of a yellow moon
They'd lock them away
'Til their dying day
In their safe, familiar rooms

It was back in the time
When those young girls would simply disappear
Somewhere in their Junior
or Senior year
And they'd come back different
And they'd come back changed
In another strange
And dangerous game
Because 'good girls'
Didn't get pregnant then
Without a ring on their finger
And a man's last name
And all the good people
Would close their eyes
And they'd all agree
On the same damned lie
Saying 'she just went to live with her Uncle John
And her Aunt Marie
Down in Boca Raton'
And they'd fold their arms
And make a wall
Because all the children were good
Back in the 'Good Old Days'

But in the orange grove
On that moonlit night
As girls learned to flirt
And all the boys were fighting
Driving 90 miles an hour
Without headlights
Through the orange trees
In the steamy night
We all could've died so easily
In a tangle of bumpers
And a flame so bright
Under the quiet sky

But most of us lived
To go to war
Or get a job
And settle down
Live our lives
And raise our children
In that mean and dying town
And we all learned
To tell a lie
To our own children
About our lives
And what we did
On moonlit nights
Back in the 'Good Old Days'

But girls will be girls
And boys will be boys
They'll raise some hell
And they'll make some noise
Burn time like it was gasoline
In the world we'll leave behind
And they'll make love
Beneath that moon
Learn too late
And die too soon
And watch their children
Slip away
Just like the 'Good Old Days'
When the Sunshine State
Was still segregated
And white boys played a game.