I grew up on the Indiana side of Chicago
With the rusty steel mills belching in the westward wind
I watched Mom and Dad trying to clean their sorrow
With my brothers and me at old Lake Michigan
There's a little boy
He's got big brown eyes
He's got swimming trunks 'bout twice his size
Looking at a steel mill sunset
Skipping a stone, "hey, ain't you a little young
To feel so alone?"
Well they changed the name of my hometown
When we moved away
Now it's more than words that I don't recognize
That kid down at the filling station
Tried to keep my change from a twenty
I could see that cold a**urance in his eyes
Hey you need ten dollars for the rainy day?
Save and go to college or just get away
Or you could spend that money on a two-day stone
Oh, there are worse things in this world than being alone
Let me tell you now
So, if you're driving from Chicago, east of Gary
And you find a fallen town that has two names
There'll be no one to possibly remember
A little lonesome brown-eyed boy who went by James
Oh the mill's shut down
But the air's still sour
You get a hotel room
You gotta pay by the hour
Oh the good old days are just good and gone
Like autumn leaves on a burning lawn
I grew up on the Indiana side of Chicago
With the rusty steel mills belching in the westward wind