One of my favorite songs even if its message is a tad simplistic. But maybe only half as simplistic as the message it's trying to subvert.
The doodle is one that Knees did during his Army stint in Alabama at Redstone Arsenal in 1968. He had just discovered Rapid-o-graph pens.
Written: Melendres
Street, Las Cruces NM, 1977
According to Knees’
memory, he was inspired to write this as a rebuttal of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say
No” garbage, but was that phrase used in 1977? Nancy didn’t get elected until
1980. Yet Knees distinctly remembers hating the idea of saying no, and wanting
to contradict it in a song. Maybe he didn’t write this until the early 80s? In
any case the plot and the guitar work are some of Knees’ best.
When I was seventeen
The world was at war
I delivered groceries
To women and old men
And though it happened
long ago,
It’s never left my mind
What an old grey-haired
mailman
Had to say to me then.
One day I rang the bell
At a house way downtown
The old mailman was
resting
On the steps down below
The woman at the door
Had heartbreak in her
eyes
When she asked me,
“Please stay a while.”
I said I had to go.
She smiled and said,
“Some other time,”
As I backed down the
stairs
She closed the door and
time stood still
For the mailman and me
We stood there without
speaking
Till he looked me in
the eyes
He said “You’re young
And now you own the
world
But someday you will
see,
That it’s a sin to say
no
To a woman who’s so
lonely
She sees the man she
loves so much
In a boy of seventeen
It’s a sin to say no
When a man like me’s so
lonely
One day you’re gonna
wake up
And you’ll be old as
me."
Army Doodle
