Straight Time

Got out of prison back in '86 and I found a wife

Walked the clean and narrow, just trying to stay out and stay alive

Got a job at the rendering plant, it ain't going to make me rich

In the darkness before dinner comes, sometimes I can feel the itch

I got a cold mind to go tripping across that thin line

I'm sick of doing straight time

My uncle's at the evening table

Makes his living running hot cars

Slips me a hundred-dollar bill

Says, "Charlie, you best remember who your friends are"

I got a cold mind to go tripping across that thin line

I ain't making straight time

Eight years in, it feels like you're gonna die

But you get used to anything

Sooner or later, it just becomes your life

Kitchen floor in the evening, tossing my little babies high

Mary's smiling, but she's watching me out of the corner of her eye

Seems you can't get any more than half free

Step out onto the front porch and suck the cold air deep inside of me

I got a cold mind to go tripping across that thin line

I'm sick of doing straight time

In the basement, hunting gun and a hacksaw

Sip a beer and thirteen inches of barrel drop to the floor

Come home in the evening, can't get the smell from my hands

Lay my head down on the pillow and go drifting off into foreign lands