Music
I used to work with a guy named
Frankie
Acosta
We were butter strippers
down at the
Challenge
Creamery
Stripping the cardboard off 70
-pound cubes of butter
Yeah, it was hot back then,
summer of 1963
And
Frankie
Manny gets so angry, he'd say
See what the women make me do
And then he'd break off a splinter
from a dirty wooden pallet
And stick it like a knife in one of them
big ol' butter cubes
That's what work is
That's what love is
A little pleasure and a little misery
Now every time it gets hard out here I think of
L .A. back in 1963
Then I got a job working
for the city of
Englewood
Runnin' the chipper,
chippin' limbs off of trees.
I worked with a guy named
Crazy
Dave
Macklin, and one day he almost
ran a tractor over me.
We were out chopping weeds near
South
Central
When the riots broke out and the sky
turned fiery red and brown
I called up my girlfriend on
a pay phone and said,
Baby, I love you, but I think
God's gonna finally burn
Gamora down
She said,
That's what work is, that's what love is
You build a house of straw
and the flames lick the sky
Now every time I fall in love out here
I think of
L .A. back in 1965
I finally got a job driving a road truck,
Santa
Barbara midnight to
L .A. 5th of
May,
all jacked up on coffee, cheap speed and donuts,
walking around the
L .A. flower market in the
rain.
And every morning I'd eat breakfast
at the pantry down on
Figueroa
The waiters were always
old -time ex -cons
Then we'd load the truck
back up with empty
rose boxes
And drive on up the coast
through the
California
dawn
That's what work is, that's what love is
Two eggs over easy, on a
T -bone spoon
Every time I see the sun
rise on the ocean I think of
L .A. back in 1968
That's what work is, that's what love is,
A little pleasure and a little misery.
Now every time it gets hard out here,
I think of
L .A. back in 1963.
I used to work with a guy named
Frankie
Acosta.
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