When I was in Chicago, when I was on the run. They wouldn’t sell me whiskey they wouldn’t sell me rum. They put me in the county jail and laid me near a wall, the bed bugs and the roaches were having a game of ball. The score was four to nothing the roaches were ahead the bed bugs hit a home run that knocked me out of bed. Four o’clock in the morning they rang the breakfast bell, a couple raw potatoes and god how they smelled. The coffee was like tobacco juice the bread was hard and stale but that’s the way they treat the bums down the county jail.

My dad sang this to me when I was young. I figured he picked it up in WWII.