I was old once.
Seems like a lifetime ago.
But sure, I was old once.
What do I remember, I hear you ask.
I remember when the New Deal was new.
Kid, it was just like the song said --
“...a nickel for a steak and a quarter for a screw.”
Yeah, I remember when the New Deal was new.
I should know.
I wrote the damn song.
Songs back then, they were quotidian. Every day hullabaloo made sweeping and grand for the average Joe Jack and Jane.
"Stroll through the park on a Sunday afternoon, maybe take a ride in a hot air balloon”
They played it on all the stations. All three of them. It was what they would one day call a “hit.” Except I was the one who got sucker-punched.
I may as well have been decapitated by a 78 in ‘34. Damn thing cut me off at the knees. My potential was realized and squandered in the 2 minutes and 24 seconds it took for the song to run its course. I loved singing it, but I resented hearing it. The radio became a cursed object. The radio became the enemy. Broadcasting my failure to the entire city, to the whole damn state. They said I was destined for big things. But they didn’t know what was coming next. How could they? Still, I hated them for it.
But I got my revenge, of a sort. I started stealing the records from stores.
No Woolworth’s was safe. I smuggled dozens out under my greatcoat. Then I smashed them on the street in front of horrified onlookers.
My fans.
My people.
Fuck ‘em.
The citizens were on a bender. Prohibition was over and people cut their own brake lines. Some made a swan dive into the gutter while others clinked their glasses together like robber barons. “Only as God made me,” I would hear these greedy sonsabitches say to each other, smiles wide as the Delaware Water Gap, and as empty as the Grand Canyon.
These ghouls will be the downfall of our country, I thought, as I chucked another empty whiskey bottle against the alley wall. The sound it made when it shattered was beautiful. A thousand tiny echoes like falling snow. Pristine, this destruction. Pure. Unfettered.
Years passed me by like an engine without a driver.
I tried to hop the train but I ended up in the shanties.
They beat me with my own stick.
I thanked them for it. I rolled myself in their garbage.
All I could do was laugh. It sounded like black lung.
But look at this -- I wrote another song.
I called it “The Great Depression Wasn’t So Great.”
The lyrics were sheer poetry. Timeless slum literature fueled by working class desperation. It was a back-breaker. I was proud of this one. It should’ve gone federal. It should’ve made me a mint.
“We would’ve killed for the scraps on your plate.”
Instead, I stabbed a man to death for cheating me at cards.
Thirty years in prison for sixteen bloody bucks.
Those damned ghouls, with their grins of malice.
They got the last laugh.
But the people still sing my songs!
In the yard, and in the alleys.