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 assurance 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