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