Dar Williams Southern California Wants To Be Western New York Lyrics

Southern California Wants To Be Western New York Lyrics




There's a part of the country could drop off tomorrow in an earthquake,

Yeah it's out there on the cutting edge, the people move, the sidwalks
shake. 
And there's another part of the country with a land that gently
creaks and thuds, 
Where the heavy snows make faucets leak in bathrooms with
free-standing tubs. 
They're in houses that are haunted, the with kids who
lie awake and think about 
All the generations past who used to use that
dripping sink. 

And sometimes one place wants to slip into the other
just to see 
What it's like to trade its demons for the restless ghost of
Mrs. Ogilvey, 
She used to pick the mint from her front yard to dress the
Sunday pork, 
Sometimes southern California wants to be western New York.


It wants to have a family business in sheet metal or power tools,

It wants to have a diner where the coffee tastes like diesel fuel, 
And
it wants to find the glory of a town they say has hit the skids, 
And it
wants to have a snow day that will turn its parents into kids, 
And it's
embarrassed, but it's lusting after a SUNY student with mousy brown hair who is

Taking out the compost, making coffee in long underwear. 

And
southern California says to save a place, I'll meet you there, 
And it tried
to pack up its Miata, all it could fit was a prayer, 
Sometimes the stakes
are bogus, sometimes the fast lane hits a fork, 
Sometimes southern
California wants to be western New York. 

Tempe, Arizona thinks the
Everglades are greener and wetter, 
And Washington, D. C. thinks that
Atlanta integrated better, 
But I think that southern California has more
pain that we can say, 
Cause it wants to travel back in time, but it just
can't leave L. A. 

But now I hear they've got a theme park planned,
designed to make you gasp and say, 
Oh, I bet that crumbling mill town was a
booming mill town in its day, 
And the old investors scoff at this, but the
young ones hope they'll take a chance, 
And they promise it will make more
dough than Mickey Mouse in northern France, 
And the planners planned an
opening day, a town historian will host, 
And the waitresses look like
waitresses who want to leave for the west coast. 

And they'll have
puttering on rainy weekends, autumn days that make you feel sad, 
They'll
have hundred year old plumbing and the family you never had, 
And a Hudson
River clean-up concert and a bundle-bearing stork, 
And I hear they've got a
menu planned, it's tr¨¦s western New York.