patrickmurfin

YouTube says that the clip from Fellow Worker Utah Phillips came from a performance at a May Day event.  Judging from the look of it, it must have been just about Utah’s last May Day—he boarded the last fast rattler off the planet last May 23.  Anyway, I can’t think of a better of celebrating International Workers’ Day.

Maybe after being Red baited old style in my last foray into electoral politics, I should lie low about this May Day stuff.  But then again, maybe I shouldn’t.  It’s my holiday, damn it, and I won’t let any yowling yahoo take it away from me!  

Back when this blog was new and shiny in 2006, I riffed about May Day and it’s history.  Check it out

                                        

I'M NOT BEING RAPTURED.   I AM SINGING DARK AS A DUNGEON BY MERLE TRAVIS FOR THE LABOR DAY SERVICE AT THE CONGREGATIONAL UNITARIAN CHURCH IN WOODSTOCK.

A Labor Day Service by Patrick Murfin

Congregational Unitarian Church

Chalice Lighting

It is Labor Day weekend, the book-end holiday of summer for most, but a celebration drained of significance for most.  For many years we never held services here.  Why bother?  Everyone had better things to do on the last long respite before life resumes its serious demands of work and school.  A couple of years ago, I seized the day.  If no one else wants it, I’ll take it, I said.  I knew it would be the only chance that I would have here to talk about a subject that causes most Unitarian Universalists to squirm in their seats and causes near apoplexy in a few—class.  I figured on Labor Day weekend I could get a pass and those who don’t want to hear about it have a good excuse to stay away and not be offended.  I’m glad that you have decided to come to church this morning and are at least willing to listen.

I am interested in class issues because I have spent my life as a member of the “rent-me-by-the-hour working class.”  This comes as a surprise to some people.  But I had many dirt-under-the fingernail jobs over the years including almost 25 years as grade school custodian.  I also generally worked a second job as well.  Shortly before I was “retired” by my school district I wrote a little poem.  It is my experience, but I think reflects on that of millions of others.

SHIRTS

I have spent my years in shirts

            with stitching above the pockets

            proclaiming the names of my employers.

They hang in blue ranks in my closet,

            multiplying always,

            pushing inch by inch

            along the rod against the

                        plaids,

                                   pearl snaps,

                                            oxford button downs.

Eight a week in the laundry hamper heap

            they smother--

            the pale green of Monday’s meeting,

            the open throated cowboy for Saturday errands,

            the smooth dress front with matching tie

            of Sunday morning sanctuary.

“Forget who you think you are,”

            they demand.

“Disabuse yourself of vanity and pretence.

We own you.

You belong to us.”

This morning I light the Chalice for Working People.

Call to Worship

What a surprise!  When I opened my new issue of UUWorld a couple of weeks ago, I found the cover splashed with teaser “Liberal Religion and the Working Class.”  Could it be that my beloved denomination was going to come to grips with the thorny issues of class?  Inside there was a thoughtful article—is there any other kind?—by Doug Muder called “Not My Father’s Religion:  Unitarian Universalism and the Working Class.”  I read it avidly.  I came away impressed by Muder’s grasp of the chasms of world view that often separate piously liberal Unitarian Universalists from working people who we believe often often cling to a rigid and simplistic form of religion that we abhor. 

Using his own downstate Illinois factory worker father as an example, Muder patiently explained why his dad would never feel comfortable in a UU church typically packed full of the kind of folks who dribble credentializing letters behind their names and who have important, challenging, and rewarding jobs.  For the professional folks who make up most UU congregations, the primary spiritual challenge is what he calls “discernment,” how to choose among the “many good things we could do with our lives.”

That is not the issue for the working class, Muder says.  Working class people do not have endless choices to make.  They can be reckless—what they might call sinful.  But then they or their families would suffer.  Or they can bite the bullet and do what they have to do to provide for themselves and their children.  That usually means trying to hold down a steady job where someone else makes most of the decisions for you.  You do what you are told, at least as long as you are on the almighty time clock that rules your existence.  Muder puts it this way:

“…that’s working class life in a nutshell.  You are not following your bliss. You’re not pursuing your calling.  You’re selling your time for money.  The way out of the maze, and the way to get your kids out of the maze is to get up every day and do something you would rather not do.”

Such an existence, he argues, finds more resonance in the harsh, either/or sin or salvation message of conservative Christianity than the mushy “you can be what ever you want” message of UU churches.  Not only would most working persons feel uncomfortable with our message, but the folks they would encounter likely are so alienated from that world view that they are likely to dismiss those who lead such lives as either too stupid to grasp our “liberating” theology or, worse, too lazy—read sinful—to break free of their restraints and “actualize” their lives.

Fine, as far as it goes.  I certainly found myself nodding in agreement as I read the article.  But typically UU, it intellectualized the problem and bemoaned the separation, but could not come to grips with the emotional reality of it.  Worse, Muder, could find no common ground that might bridge the gap.  In the end the article amounted to mere wistful regret that the sheep and the goats were fated for different paths.

One other thing about the magazine caught my eye—the cover.  In attempting to portray the working class they pictured a fat old man eating a sandwich in what has been identified by UU blogers as a famous Manhattan delicatessen.  The only clues that he is supposed to be a worker and not a college professor are his work boots and jeans.  Hardly a heroic figure, or one even engaged in labor.  I thought of the images of workers from my youthful days as a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, the historic radical labor union known as the Wobblies.  Illustrations from the INDUSTRIAL WORKER, the covers of pamphlets, or on the “silent agitator” stickers we used to slap up in factory bathrooms showed workers as strong, resolute and heroic.  Typically they were shown with powerful arms folded or reaching out to a better world.  For some reason they were usually shown only from the torso up.  Take a look at the drawing on the cover of your order of service.  It is by Ralph Chaplin, the composer of “Solidarity Forever.”  We had a joking name for this guy.  We called him the “nutless wonder” because he disappeared below the belt.  Nutless or not this guy is a hero.  The fat guy with a sandwhich is not.  Neither view is truly representational of the working class.  But I’m afraid that the UUWorld view is condescending.

Today we are going to look back into our past to examine what shaped our Unitiarian Universalist attitudes about class, look at some of the realities of working class life today, and see if there is not something we can learn from working people that can enrich our own communities.  For it is only when we honor their strengths and contributions that they will feel truly welcome.

                                        
My, my, how the immage of the working class has changed from RALPH CHAPLIN'S defiant rebel to some fat old man gnoshing on a pastrami sandwhich at a Mannhatten deli.  What does this tell  us of UU views of working people?

            As far as I can tell, the LABOR DAY services that I have been leading at the CONGREGATIONAL UNITARIAN CHURCH for the last couple of years have been the only religious observances of this secular national holiday in McHENRY COUNTY.  Oh, maybe the occasion might get a passing remark from the pulpit, some BIBLE verse endorsing the dignity of labor might be stapled awkwardly on to the proceedings, or some progressive cleric might utter a prayer.  But no one else devotes an entire service to the occasion.

            Many churches are less than jammed this weekend.  Parishioners are off celebrating the last big weekend of the summer.  Many Protestant churches are more interested in gearing up for the “homecoming” service next week when the Church Year roars off into high gear after the summer doldrums and Sunday School resumes.  We used to skip services entirely because so few people showed up.

            Then I asked if I could “have” the day to do the summer service that was usually assigned to me.  I had wanted to do a labor service for years—on or around MAY DAY, the real INTERNATIOAL LABOR DAY.  That idea was shot down pretty firmly by the Worship Committee and the Church Council, who wanted “more spiritual” content and absolutely none of this “class nonsense.”  Even the usually supportive REV. DAN LARSEN, my friend and collaborator in numerous progressive causes, didn’t feel like stirring up complaints from members who might decide on next year’s pledge based on their level of offence at my red ravings.

            I pointed out that on the Labor Day weekend those who would be offended just by the topic would have plenty of excuse to stay away.  It didn’t hurt when I pointed out that those who did show up might throw a few extra bucks in the collection plate—summer being a financial dessert for the church.  And so I was allowed to hold my worship service.  Thirty or forty people showed up the last two years, enough to make unlocking the church worthwhile.

            Anyway, any readers of this blog are welcome to hear me “preach” this Sunday at 10:45 a.m. at the Congregational Unitarian Church, 221 Dean Street in Woodstock.  The topic is Where Are They?  Unitarian Universalism and the Working Class.  I will even sing JOE HILL’S  The Preacher and the Slave and Dark as a Dungeon by MERLE TRAVIS.

            You don’t have to be a Unitarian Universalist to attend.  Hell, you don’t even have to be a Christian.  If you are agnostic, you don’t have to worry that the roof will cave in on you.  If you are religious, you don’t have to be concerned that you will be struck by lighting for apostasy.

            Hope to see some of you there.

Patrick Murfin, a former member of the Industrial Workers of the World and co-author of THE IWW: ITS FIRST SEVENTY YEARS led Labor Day services at the Congregational Unitarian Church in Woodstock.  His sermon was titled “Forgotten Labor Day.”  The service was the last of the summer worship series before formal worship resumes in the Sanctuary on September 10th.

I have already been asked to post the quiz referred to in my Labor Day Sermon.  Here it is.

WHAT DO YOU REALLY THINK OF THE

WORKING CLASS--A QUIZ

1)  Your daughter is getting married.  Which fiancé sends you to the antacids?

           A.  A black MBA with a corner office.

           B.  The captain of the lube pit with a GED.

           C.  Betty, her college room mate.

2)  You've been downsized.  You have been out of work for nearly a year and your savings have gone. What do you do?

          A. Try selling your tea cup collection on e-bay.

          B.  Don't lower your sights--send out another 150 resumes for top jobs.

          C. Take that job at CostCutCo for $7 an hour.

3)  You know the neighbors have been having a hard time. You hear that they are filing for bankruptcy.  What do you do? 

           A.  Offer them a loan "until things straighten out."

           B.  Recommend a broker to sell their house.

           C  Tell the neighbors that you knew they were spendthrifts with no sense of personal                                                   responsibility who need to be held accountable.

4)  Your son has made a career choice.  Which choice causes you to loose sleep at night?

          A.  He is apprenticing to be a plumber.

          B.  He practices the Pan flute 12 hours a day.

          C.  He entered the Master of Social Work program and stands to earn nearly $30,000 when he graduates.

5)  O.K. You've taken that job at the plant.  It isn't so bad and you make enough money to pay the bills.  It's your daughter's recital right after work.  What do you do?

         A.  Rush right to school in your uniform with the   company logo over one pocket and your name   stitched over the other.

         B.   Keep a sport coat and a pair of loafers to throw on in the car and hope no one looks too closely at the shirt.

        C.   Go home, clean up, put on a clean polo shirt and khakis.  Your daughter won't notice if you’re 20 minutes late.

6)  Your waitress recognizes you from church.  She invites you over to her house for a holiday party.  What do you do?

       A.  Come and bring a bottle of wine--Boone's Farm.

       B.  Call at the last moment and tell her your mother was hit by a meteor.

       C.  Reciprocate by inviting her to a theater party she   can't possibly afford.

7)  One of your co-workers is secretly passing out union literature.  What do you do?

      A.  Run and tell the boss to put an end to this nonsense right now.

      B. Be horrified that your job would even be considered eligible for unionization.

      C.  Say it's about time, how do I sign up?

This quiz will not be graded.  You do not have to show it to anyone.  We won't call on you to report.  Aren't you relieved?

FORGOTTEN LABOR DAY

A Worship Service by Patrick Murfin

September 3, 2006

Congregational Unitarian Church

Woodstock, Illinois

It’s Labor Day.  For most Americans it is just the left bookend of the summer, one last extra day off to spend time with family or to relax.  It’s a guilt free holiday.  Unlike Memorial Day there will be no pesky editorials or old guys in VFW caps to complain about forgetting the sacrifices of our troops.  There will be no Fourth of July calls by politicians to take time out to remember the Blessings of Liberty.  No body nags you about Labor Day, except maybe the merchants who stuff you Sunday paper full of extra ad inserts eager to goad you into one last buying frenzy before the long dry spell until Christmas.

When I was searching my clip art collections to put together the order of service for today, I found dozens of illustrations of cook outs and barbeques. I found pictures of guys dozing in hammocks.  I even saw a couple of graphics of women about to deliver a baby. I found one—count them one—that showed working people gathered to mark the holiday.  And my clip art collection includes not only the package in Microsoft Word, but a program called “Big Box of Art” which advertises 350,000 images and thousands more in the Print Shop Deluxe program I used to create the bulletin in your hands.

I was an elementary school custodian for more than twenty years.  At this time of year classrooms were still festooned with back to school decorations or generic symbols of fall like turning leaves, acorns, and footballs.  Ground Hog Day got more decorative attention than Labor Day.  And there were no special lessons, hand-outs, or videos.  In the rush to get the kids settled back in for the school year, Labor Day is forgotten.  Kids just weren’t taught about it.

You get the picture by now.  Labor Day is the Rodney Dangerfield of holiday—it gets no respect.

So how did this come to pass?  I submit that it is because American culture in general does not value the people the holiday is supposed to celebrate—the working class.  In fact high school civics ideology holds that America is somehow classless.  Not classless in the leveling way of despised communism, but absent permanent economic castes.  Even the most humble may rise.  In fact it is generationally expected.  Your great grandfather may have started pushing a cart and sweeping up horse dung from the city streets, but here you are with a three car garage and a six figure income.  In fact failure to make those leaps is generally regarded as moral and intellectual failure.

Then there is the image that the word “worker” conjures in the mind.  Think of our opening song, Tennessee Ernie Ford’s famous version of “Sixteen Tons.”  The coal miner is born in want and degradation.  His job is dangerous, back breaking, and filthy.  He is the victim of the bosses in the pit and the company store which keeps him in a kind of permanent serfdom. Naturally he is angry.  But he is ignorant and brutish that he can express his violent rage only against the hapless victims who cross his path.  He is more to be feared than pitied.   Who wants to identify with that?

Most Americans of the professional, managerial, and entrepreneurial classes—and that includes most of the folks in this room—don’t think of themselves as “workers,” a term evocative of dirt under the fingernails, sweat, and dumb toil.  More over they associate “Labor” only with unions, now viewed mostly as at best a quaint but irrelevant remnant and often reviled as an impediment to modernizing the economy and rationalizing the work force.  What’s to celebrate about that?  Better to throw one last steak on the barbeque and start thinking about football.

Class is a dirty word in this country.  We prefer not to think about it.  Good, middle class Americans are thought to believe that they have more in common with John Welch, Bill Gates, and the Walton family—Sam’s kin, not the scruffy denizens of a Depression mountain top—than with blue collar, pink collar, no collar schlumps chained to a time clock.  Is it any wonder that a cultural disdain is widespread.  It may not be as in-your-face as the British class system,  but it is just about as pervasive.  We need to face it.  There is a wide spread predjudice—yes predjudice against those who are precieved as working class in this country.

As Unitarian Universalists, we may believe we are above that.  We are famously open minded.  We treasure our historic connection with the women’s movement from suffrage to the ERA and gender equity.  We brag about our abolitionist roots and our embrace of the Civil Rights movement.  The Unitarian Universalist Association identifies itself not just as racially tolerant but as “anti-racist.”  We have embraced the gay, lesbian and transgendered, flown our rainbow flags, and proclaimed our support for same sex marriage.  Surely we wouldn’t harbor any kind of lingering prejudice.  Think again.

Almost totally missing from the parade of progressive causes that have been supported by Unitarians, Universalists, and UUs of today is the cause of labor.  In the 19^th Century, especially around the Unitarian Jerusalem of Boston, dominated by the wealth families of merchants, bankers and mill owner collectively know as the Brahmins,  there was a bristling hostility toward the emerging labor movement—and the filthy immigrants who swelled the ranks of the working class. 

Famously, the sons of Unitarianism’s finest families were part of a Harvard College based Massachusetts National Guard company that eagerly responded to the call to suppress the famous Lawrence Textile strike of 1912.  They shot and bayoneted the strikers, overwhelmingly immigrant women.  They bragged about it in letters home, some of which were approvingly read from Boston pulpits.  By the way, today’s hymn, “As We Come Marching, Marching” commemorates that strike.

Out here in the Midwest the Western Unitarian Conference led by Jenkin Lloyd Jones, did try to connect to the labor movement.  Back east mavericks like John Jayne Holmes also tried.  But there efforts were largely marginalized.  Except for here and there, the great wave of unionizing during the 1930’s passed by without Unitarian or Universalist support.

Today, demographers tell us that Unitarian Universalists enjoy the second highest per capita income of all American denominations.  Only those silk stocking Episcopalians bring down more.  This is not because there are a lot of really rich folks in UU churches.  There are not.  Former UUA President John Buehrens ruefully observed a few years go that we had driven away the traditional old money Unitarian families making his job a chief fundraiser a lot more difficult.  The high average income of UU’s is due to the overwhelming preponderance of college educated professionals among us on one hand and the almost total absence of both the truly poor and those with less than college educations on the other.  Our current view of the working classes may have less to do with an investment in economic lordship than a lingering arrogance based pride of academic achievement and professional standing.

A couple of stories may illustrate some unspoken attitudes.

Some years ago I led a work shop at a Central Mid West District conference.  The discussion was lively and several people lingered to talk after the session ended.  One woman, a delegate from Peoria, was effusive in her praise for my presentation.   But she called me “Reverend.”  I gently corrected her, “I’m not a minister, I’m a school custodian.”  She looked like she had been slapped in the face, spun on her heals and departed without another word.  I later was seated at the same table with her at lunch.  She was a school teacher, she told those around her.  Then she went into a bitter denunciation of striking Caterpillar tractor workers, who had been out for more than a year.  “They divided Peoria,” she said, “They tore our community apart.”  It never occurred to her that the company might be at least equally to blame.  I asked her if she had any Caterpillar workers in her church.  She said there were some retired managers, but no union workers.  But she did have the children of some of “those people” in her classes.

An aberration you say.  Perhaps.  Certainly an extreme case most of us would be more circumspect in our comments.  But consider this.

In 2000 delegates to the UUA General Assembly in Nashville adopted a Statement of Conscience on “Economic Injustice, Poverty and Racism.”  It was the culmination of years of work by organizations like UU for a Just Economic Community and a handful of committed congregations to get the Association to take on the issues of class in America.  To say that it was hard fought to come to fruition is to put it mildly.  I participated in some of the drafting sessions and I believe even contributed a phase or two to the final document.  But the procedure cut out some of the toughest provisions of the original proposal and generally softened the language.  The final document called on UU congregations to do things like work toward fair wage and benefits; access to adequate housing and social services; and the removal of environmental and occupational hazards that disproportionately affected low income people.  Hardly revolutionary stuff.  But supporter looked forward to UU congregations tackling these issues with the energy that they had applied to the civil rights, gender equity, and gay rights movements. 

In an e-mail to me, UUA President Beuhrens, predicted that nothing would come of it.  “We are not ready for a tough conversation on class.”  He was right.  The Statement of Conscience was widely ignored by congregations, including this one.  Those few who were committed to the struggle soldiered on, but effectively no one else did.

On the insert in the order of service you have probably noticed and insert quiz titled “What Do You Really Think of the Working Class.”  Don’t worry, we are not going to collect them, or even ask any one to stand up and recite their answers.  The questions are tongue in cheek.  But if you answer them to yourselves honestly, some of you may be surprised by what you learn.

Given all of this cultural baggage, it is to be expected that most Americans do not want to be identified with the working class or feel that they have much to celebrate this holiday except some time off work.

But consider this:  The great majority of Americans are totally dependent on wages and tips or social security and pensions for virtually all of their income.  The ownership society so beloved by our president and conservative ideologs is largely a myth.  The overwhelming majority of capital assets, including stocks and bonds are held by the top ten percent of the population.  Those in the top fifth through ninth deciles of the population typically have less that $5000 in total assets invested in securities, including mutual funds, IRAs and pension funds.  Virtually all of their wealth is in the value of their homes.  Those in the bottom half of all households  generally have  no investments at all.

While most families are dependent on earnings from employment, the share of wages and salaries now makes up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since record keeping began in 1947. Real wages have declined 2 percent since 2003 while corporate profits are at the highest levels since the 1960’s.  A decline like this during an economic and as worker productivity has skyrocketed is unprecedented.

Yet the administration boasts that during the same period average family income has increased.  How can that be?  It is because virtually all income growth has occurred among the top 10 percent, the true ownership class in America.  That growth reflects not only return on investment, but the fact that compensation packages for top corporate leaders have soared.  CEO’s of Fortune 500 firms now typically make more before lunch on the first business day of the year than an worker at the statistical mean earns in a year.

The fact is that virtually all of us are just hired hands--even those with six figure incomes, professional titles and status, and who may be charged with the direction of many other employees.  As much as we may be loath to admit it, most of us are wage slaves.

Further consider these other alarming trends:

• Income from wages has stagnated, and by some measurements steadily fallen over the last thirty years relative to inflation.  A rise in the value of benefits which has tended to soften wage erosion has been reversed as more and more employees are stripped of health benefits and pensions.
• As work forces in industry after industry have been cut to the bone, productivity has soared—but American workers now routinely put in more hours at work than when the eight hour day supposedly became standard in the 1930’s.  And that does not include the rising number of people holding down second jobs or those who cannot find full time employment and stitch together two or three part time positions totaling more than a standard work week.  American workers also have much less vacation time available and paid holidays than in comparable industrial nations.
• While the demands for overtime have grown, recent administrative law changes have redefined millions of workers who give even casual instruction to others as “management” and others who require almost any level of “special training” to hold their jobs as “professionals.”  In both cases employer are free to convert the workers to a salary basis, ineligible for per-hour overtime premium pay.
• Despite recent efforts, the Federal Minimum Wage remains frozen at a level that fails to raise even a full time worker above the poverty line.  Due to inflation the Minimum Wage buys less today than at any time since its inception.  Friends and foes of increasing it agree that it also serves as a floor to wages for workers in other low wage jobs.
• Employers in all categories have “shifted the burden” of health care onto employees.  That means dramatically raising premiums, increasing deductibles and co-payments, slashing or capping benefits, and even eliminating health coverage for workers altogether.
• Traditional pension funds are in jeopardy.  Over the decades companies under funded their pension plans to pay for other priorities.  As a result many plans are now or soon will be in bankruptcy.  Hard pressed industries, lead by commercial aviation, are getting court permission to walk away from their plans entirely leaving the Federal Government holding the bag.  Workers will get pennies on the dollar of expected retirement income.  Recent pension reform law signed into law this summer gives companies seven additional years to fund their pensions.  In fact it is expected that many more companies will terminate their plans or convert them to largely employee funded IRA accounts over the next decade.  Millions of wage dependent workers will never be able to fully retire until they are literally too ill or feeble to continue to work.
• The cost of higher education, traditionally the ticket out of the working class for the children of laborers, has skyrocketed while financial aid has stagnated.  Students must turn increasingly to loans to pay for their education.  And federal student loan rates just went up again.  Students are graduating with tens of thousands of dollars in debt which will strangle their ability to use their income to start a family or buy a home.  The old idea that any one who is good enough to get into college can get an education is going by the wayside. 
• Dramatic spikes in energy costs threaten to further eat away further at stagnant income and many economists believe we may be entering a period of sustained inflation.
• The housing boom is bust.  Falling home prices erode the value of the only asset of most working families.
• World economic policies continue to encourage the out-migration of jobs.  While in the past this was confined largely to manufacturing, it has spread to the service industries, and now even to professionals.
• While jobs have been created during the current boom, they have been concentrated on the low end and on the very high end.  Most of those whose jobs evaporated never replace their old earnings.

I could go on, but you get the picture.  As one expert dryly noted “There are two economies out there.  One has been just white hot, going great guns.  Those are the people who have benefited from globalization, technology, greater productivity, and higher corporate income.  And then there are the working stiffs…they’re not getting ahead despite the fact they are working very hard.  And there are a lot more people in that group than the other.”

Another observes that the bottom half of the middle class is sliding into poverty and most of the rest is barely treading water.

So welcome to the club.  We are all workers after all. Once we realize that the grease monkey and college professor are in the same boat, maybe we can get over our old dreads and suspicions and work together to get ourselves out of this pickle.

            Happy Labor Day, Fellow Workers!
*************************************************************************

Here we are in America, Glory!

Livin’ through this wonderful story,

In the dark and dreary slum where I was born,

Steel mills ridin’ on my daddy’s shoulders.

‘Til he just couldn’t get older,

In the dark and dreary slum where I was born.

Now I’ve left home for good,

Wouldm’t live there if I could,

Cause workin’ all your life is such a drag,

Oh, my daddy was a fool,

I won’t stay in his old bag,

I’ll hitch hike, smoke dope, and sure be cool.

Here we are in America, Glory!

Livin’ through this wonderful story,

In the groovy part of town where I live now,

Sun shines day, and moon shines night

And I’m just too stoned to fight,

In the groovy part of town where I live now.

Now sometimes I drive a hack,

And I get stoned when I get back,

Workin’ to get high is what I do.

Now don’t give me your stuff,

For the real world makes me blue,

And I been hearin’ ‘bout it quite enough.

Here we are in America, Glory!

Livin’ through this wonderful story,

In the groovy part of town where I live now,

Sun shines day, and moon shines night

And I’m just too stoned to fight,

In the groovy part of town where I live now.

But they’ve thrown longhairs of the job,

Treated me like any slob,

Last month’s rent is waitin’ to get paid,

There’s no food upon the shelf

And I really am afraid,

What can I do a standing by myself?

Here we are in America, Glory!

Livin’ through this wonderful story,

In the dark and dreary slum where I was born,

Sittin’ and a starvin’ on grass and acid,

I may be hungry, but I sure am placid,

In the dark and dreary slum where I was born.