A Few Details More

 

This is a song I wrote in 1989 about an old lady I met while looking for an apartment and planning my escape from the cult. 

I went looking for an apartment the other day,

Cause I kind of desperately wanted to get away.

So I stopped by one that had a sign on the way,

Located about a half a mile from City Hall.

 

Anyway, I was just looking for the manager,

So I knocked on a door, and an old lady answered.

“Come in,” she said, repeating it several times.

She was hard of hearing, so I told her I was just looking for an apartment.

 

She was going to move to a trailer park in two months.

She said, “Maybe you can move into this one.

Look in the kitchen, you could have table.

And for 300 bucks, you can have this bed. It’s brand new.

 

“Now, the bathroom is a little different, see the toilet

Has something on it, cause it’s too low for me to use it.

I hurt my toe. It was broken. I had a bad fall.

You know, my son and my daughters don’t care for me at all.

 

“My mother died when I was twenty, and I miss her still.

Here, listen to a poem about her funeral.

My other two sons are gone. One died of cancer

From eating K-Rations in the war, died two years later.

 

“My one son who’s still living said I was crazy.

Told me they were going to put me away.

Well, it hurt my feelings, and as a Mother’s Day present,

He borrowed my car and took it in for a trade in

(Bought himself a new car).”

 

All this time I was nervously wishing

I’d have knocked on a different door.

At the same time she would tell me

Just a few details more.

 

Her dog, Teddy, was drowned when she took him to the groomer for a bath.

Fido, her concerned son-in-law had put to sleep so she wouldn’t have to grieve his death.

Her previous landlord kicked her out after forty years.

She wanted to beat the sugar out of him, reading the eviction notice in tears.

 

So many people had hurt her so,

And here I was wanting to go,

But she kept me there with one detail more

 

This apartment will be open. Soon I’ll be gone.

The one on the sign is a different one.

A lady died there. She was old like me

I was born in 1906.” (that made her 83)

 

Her face was chiseled with the stories she told.

She’d worked in many factories and as a cook in Chicago.

She told me about a band of angels she saw

Coming for a baby, rejoicing like it was a million dollars.

 

When she said “a million dollars,” her mouth got real tight.

Her voice began to to get shrill and intensify.

Tears welled up in her eyes.

For a little while, she started to cry.

 

She only asked me one or two questions,

Which I answered, but she hardly listened.

Content she was to tell me about her life,

How just last December she was robbed by some guys.

(They loaded up two trucks and took off—said they were helping her move)

I didn’t know, I still don’t, what I’ve learned,

Except that life is hard and getting old no fun.

So here I am. I still haven’t found an apartment,

But I’m still young, and I haven’t given up yet.