... There lived a race of innocents, and they were you and me,
> Long ago and far away, in a land that time forgot,
> Before the days of Dylan , or the dawn of Camelot.
> There lived a race of innocents, and they were you and me,
>
> For Ike was in the White House in that land where we were born,
> Where navels were for oranges, and Peyton Place was porn.
>
> We longed for love and romance, and waited for our Prince,
> Eddie Fisher married Liz, and no one's seen him since.
>
> We danced to 'Little Darlin,' and sang to 'Stagger Lee'
> And cried for Buddy Holly in the Land That Made Me, Me.
>
> Only girls wore earrings then, and 3 was one too many,
> And only boys wore flat-top cuts, except for Jean McKinney.
>
> And only in our wildest dreams did we expect to see,
> A boy named George with Lipstick, in the Land That Made Me , Me .
>
> We fell for Frankie Avalon, Annette was oh, so nice,
> And when they made a movie, they never made it twice.
>
> We didn't have a Star Trek Five, or Psycho Two and Three,
> Or Rocky-Rambo Twenty in the Land That Made Me, Me.
>
> Miss Kitty had a heart of gold, and Chester had a limp,
> And Reagan was a Republican whose co-star was a chimp.
>
> We had a Mr. Wizard, but not a Mr. T,
> And Oprah couldn't talk yet, in the Land That Made Me, Me.
> We had our share of heroes, we never thought they'd go,
> At least not Bobby Darin, or Marilyn Monroe.
>
> For youth was still eternal, and life was yet to be,
> And Elvis was forever in the Land That Made Me, Me.
>
> We'd never seen the rock band that was Grateful to be Dead,
> And Airplanes weren't named Jefferson , and Zeppelins were not Led..
> And Beatles lived in gardens then, and Monkees lived in trees,
> Madonna was Mary in the Land That Made Me, Me.
>
> We'd never heard of microwaves, or telephones in cars,
> And babies might be bottle-fed, but they were not grown in jars.
>
> And pumping iron got wrinkles out, and 'gay' meant fancy-free,
> And dorms were never co-Ed in the Land That Made Me, Me.
> We hadn't seen enough of jets to talk about the lag,
> And microchips were what was left at the bottom of the bag.
>
> And hardware was a box of nails, and bytes came from a flea,
> And rocket ships were fiction in the Land That Made Me, Me.
>
> T-Birds came with portholes, and side shows came with freaks,
> And bathing suits came big enough to cover both your cheeks.
>
> And Coke came just in bottles, and skirts below the knee,
> And Castro came to power near the Land That Made Me, Me.
> We had no Crest with Fluoride, we had no Hill Street Blues,
> We had no patterned pantyhose or Lipton herbal tea,
> Or prime-time ads for those dysfunctions in the Land That Made Me,Me.
>
> There were no golden arches, no Perrier to chill,
> And fish were not called Wanda, and cats were not called Bill.
>
> And middle-aged was 35 and old was forty-three,
> And ancient were our parents in the Land That Made Me, Me.
>
> But all things have a season, or so we've heard them say,
> And now instead of Maybelline we swear by Retin-A.
> They send us invitations to join AARP,
> We've come a long way, baby, from the Land That Made Me, Me.
> So now we face a brave new world in slightly larger jeans,
> And wonder why they're using smaller print in magazines.
> And we tell our children's children of the way it used to be,
> Long ago and far away in the Land That Made Me, Me.ElPasoInc :
above text same as:
In the land that made me, me
What's on my mind
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real
Iron and coke, chromium steel
"Allentown," the opening song to The Nylon Curtain, signals that this will be a different kind of album for Billy. The song starts with the sound of a factory whistle and chugs along like a factory assembly line. It features an acoustic guitar, and in the music video Billy is seen playing a guitar like a modern Woody Guthrie or other folk singer. It is an apt portrait as "Allentown" explores the disillusionment of the country during the late 70s and early 80s when the steady factory jobs of the 1950-1970s began to disappear and America lost its status as the world's leading manufacturer."They threw an American flag in our face . . . " Three Flags by Jasper Johns (1958)The price that we each paid on an individual level came in the form of a lost sense, or at a least a diminished sense, of our hopes and dreams. "Something happened on the way to that place" as the graduation diplomas simply hung on the wall and "never really helped us at all." Life was not a 1950's television sitcom like "Leave It To Beaver" or the "Donna Reed Show, rather, it was struggle, conflict, and hardship. As Billy writes "but something happened on the way to that place, they threw an American flag in our face." The nylon curtain of America in the 1970s and early 1980s obscured or veiled our vision of the America we thought we would inherit.The song conveys a weariness brought about by hours of mind-numbing, back-breaking work with no American dream in sight. It is reminiscent of the books of Studs Terkel, like Working, which chronicle the struggles and dashed dreams of the American working class, and not unlike many of the poems of Philip Levine that focus on the human struggle of factory workers and laborers in industrial American such as You Can Have It.
Despite this sobering message, "Allentown" was a hit, reaching #17 on the US Billboard charts. People were undoubtedly feeling what Billy was saying in the song, bemoaning the loss of the American dream, or at least the realization that dream was just that, a dream. Billy was a true chronicler of the times.
And they're closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem they're killing time
Filling out forms, standing in line
Well our fathers fought the Second World War
Spent their weekends on the Jersey Shore
Met our mothers at the USO
Asked them to dance, danced with them slow
And we're living here in Allentown
But the restlessness was handed down
And it's getting very hard to stay
Well we're waiting here in Allentown
For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard, if we behaved
So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real
Iron and coke, chromium steel
And we're waiting here in Allentown.
But they've taken all the coal from the ground
And the union people crawled away
Every child had a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got.
But something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our face, oh oh oh.
Well I'm living here in Allentown
And it's hard to keep a good man down.
But I won't be getting up today
And it's getting very hard to stay
And we're living here in Allentown.A live version of "Allentown" from 1982's Live From Long Island.Billy discusses "Allentown" from a 1985 radio interview.Billy discusses "Allentown" on SiriusXM in 2016.
Read this article for background on the song and Billy's early following in the Lehigh Valley area thanks to a few DJs and promoters there. Billy originally wrote the song in the 1970s and called it Levittown, based on where he grew up, but couldn't find the right lyrics for it ("well we're living here in Levittown, and the dirt on the ground is brown"). When the economy went South in the early 1980s and steel factories started closing down, he changed it to "Allentown" after Allentown, Pennsylvania, and found meaningful lyrics. Although the steel mills were primarily in Bethlehem, rather than Allentown, the latter rhymed better. Here is another article about the song written in 1992. And here is Billy talking about the song at a Q&A in 2016 (YouTube video).===========================================================Final Disclosure:Quite few negatives not mentioned - McCarthyism and the HouseUnAmerican Activities Committee, the John Birch society ("Get U.S. out
of the U.N."), Jim Crow version 1.0, the embryonic View Nam war, the
fully grown Korean "Conflict" (we weren't supposed to call it a war),
the FBI spying on so-called dissidents (instead of the NSA spying on
everyone and their brother), drop drills and the constant fear of a
nuclear attack. Just to name a few.an OLDER web item:What is author and original link!!? the poem, it appears to also exist, 18 months later, also uncredited from here: http://www.elpasoinc.com/elpasoplus/columns/sam_kobren/in-the-land-that-made-me-me/article_c8475b82-0c09-11e2-a592-0019bb30f31a.html
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