The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #53579   Message #828604
Posted By: mmb
17-Nov-02 - 05:32 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: The Sidewalks of New York: 'East side...'
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: East side, West side
It may not be 100% accurate, but most of the first verse has oozed to the surface as I've been searching:

If you ever take a walk down the Bowry streets
Where broken glass litters the way,
And broken-down men with nowhere to go
Will greet you at all times of day,
With their eyes held down and their hands held out,
And there's nothing that you can say.
You can't look in their eye, so you pass on by,
And you wonder what makes a man stay. . .

    Someone posted in the "Happy Birthday Folk Legacy" thread that John/Jon Wilcox and Jim Ringer were among the writer's favorite Folk Legacy artists. This song has the same empathy with the Down-and-Out as Jim Ringer's "Waitin' for the Hard Times to Go." - - And rightfully so, since they were contemporaneous with the recession of the '70's and Reaganomics . . . but I won't go there.
    I will find the remainder of the song somewhere, if Sandy or someone else doesn't come up with it first.    M.