“Life In Song” #21: “Adolescent Blues” is a humorous look back on childhood and early teen experiences from the perspective of the soon to graduate high school senior that I was in 1978. The 1st verse refers to my childhood friend Mike McTygue. The 2nd verse describes a bit of what it was like at my grandparents house in Western NY (the source of many bug phobias). And the 3rd verse make reference to a certain girl who introduced me to…um…let’s say “several new experiences”. “Hester’s Pearl is a reference to “The Scarlet Letter” which we all had to read in 9th grade…
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Lyrics:
Adolescent Blues | May 1978 | Song #21
Chorus:
I got those Adolescent blues
The time in life to choose
Between religion, women and booze
But let’s put that aside for a while
And go back in time
To me and Mikie on the dirt pile
We had our match box cars
Never dreamed of hopping bars
Oh no, no, no, no
We had our share of playground fights
Hot summer nights,
Hide and go seek with flashlights
And our cowboy hats
Went well with baseball bats
As I remember….
Chorus:
And it ain’t so long ago
We’d go to grandma’s a lot
Be it rain, sleet, hail or snow
There were fields of cows and wheat
And plenty of good things to eat
Mmmmm, mmmmm, mmmm, mmmmmmm
There were varmints all around
Creeping and crawlin’, crawlin’ all over the ground
Caterpillars and bees
Seemed to have an affection for me that continues
To this day…
Chorus:
And as I squint back through the haze
Of courtship clichés
Locker steaming high school days
I can see one wild girl
Surely she was Hester’s Pearl
Uh, huh, huh, huh
My voice was changing at the time
She said her heart would break if I dumped her…
When she dumped me I broke mine
Well I’m ready to enter the world now
I just need someone to please
Tell me how…
Chorus:
Tuning: Standard
“Adolescent Blues” by Mark Shepard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
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