Kenny Rogers - San Francisco Mabel Joy

His daddy was an honest man,
red dirt Georgia farmer
His mamma lived her short life
having kids and baling hay
He had fifteen years,
an ache inside to wander
He hopped a freight in Waycross,
wound up in L.A.
Lord the cold nights had no pity
on a Waycross Georgia farmboy
Most days he went hungry,
then the summer came
He met a girl known on the strip
as San Francisco's Mabel Joy
Destitutions child born of an L.A.
street called shame
Growing up came quietly
in the arms of Mabel Joy
Laughter found their mornings,
brought a meaning to his life
Yes, the night before she left, sleep came
and left that Waycross country boy
with dreams of Georgia cotton
and a California wife
Sunday morning found him standing
'neath the red light of her door
When a right cross sent him reeling,
put him face down on the floor

In place of Mabel Joy he found
a merchant mad merine,
he growled that Georgia neck is red,
but sonny your still green
He turned twenty-one
in a gray rock federal prison
The old judge had no mercy
for a Waycross Georgia boy
Starin' at those four gray,
in silence he would listen
That midnight freight he knew
would take him back to Mabel Joy
Sunday morning found him
lyin' 'neath the red light of her door
With a bullet in his side he cried
have you seen Mabel Joy
Stunned and shaken someone s
aid she's not here no more
She left this house four years today
They say she's looking for some Georgia farm boy