DESCRIPTION:
"Kentucky Avenue" is a song written and performed by Tom Waits, and released on Side Two of his 1978 album, Blue Valentine.

"Kentucky Avenue" contains autobiographical elements. Tom Waits grew up on a street called Kentucky Avenue in Whittier, California. In a 1979 interview, Waits recounted:

I used to walk down Kentucky Avenue collecting cigarette butts. And I finally got me a paper route. I used to get up at 1 o' clock in the morning so I could deliver my papers and still have time to break the law...

Many of the song's lyrics relate to real people in Waits' childhood. "Mrs. Storm" was a neighbour who would sit with a twelve-gauge shotgun protruding from her kitchen window.
Perhaps the strongest autobiographical influence was Waits' childhood friend, a boy named Kipper, who suffered from polio and used a wheelchair.In 1981, Waits elaborated on these memories:

I didn't understand what polio was. I just knew it took him longer to get to the bus stop than me... Sometimes I think kids know more than anybody. I rode a train once to Santa Barbara with this kid and it almost seemed like he lived a life somewhere before he was born and he brought what he knew with him into this world and so... it's what you don't know that's usually more interesting. Things you wonder about, things you have yet to make up your mind about. There's more to deal with than just your fundamental street wisdom. Dreams. Nightmares.

The song's closing moments include the line "we'll hop that freight train in the hall." This refers to one of Waits' earliest childhood memories, in which he would imagine that, every night, a freight train would run through the centre of his house.

Lyric:



Eddie graces buick got 4 bullet holes in the side
Charlie De lisle sittin' at the top of an avocado tree
Mrs Storm'll stab you with a steak knife if you step on her lawn
I got a half pack of lucky strikes man, come along with me

Let's fill our pockets with macadamia nuts
Then go over to Bobby good Mansons and jump off the roof
Hilda plays strip poker and her mama's across the street
Joey Navinski says, "She put her tongue in his mouth"

Dicky Faulkner's got a switchblade and some goose neck risers
That eucalyptus is a hunchback, there's a wind up from the south
Let me tie you up with kite string and I'll show you the scabs on my knee Watch out for the broken glass, put your shoes and socks on
And come along with me

Lets follow that fire track, I think your house is burnin' down
Then go down to the hobo jungle and kill some rattle, snakes with a trowel
We'll break all the windows in the old Anderson place
And steal a bunch of boysenberrys and smear 'em on our face

I'll get a dollar from my mama's purse
And buy that skull and crossbones ring
And you can wear it around your neck on an old piece of string
Then we'll spit on Ronnie Arnold and flip him the bird
And slash the tires on the school bus now don't say a word

I'll take a rusty nail and scratch your initials on my arm
And I'll show you how to sneak up on the roof of the drugstore
I'll take those spokes from your wheelchair and a magpies wings
And I'll tie 'em to your shoulders and your feet

I'll steal a hacksaw from my dad and cut the braces off your legs
And we'll bury them tonight load in the cornfield
Just put a church key in your pocket, we'll hop that freight train in the hall
We'll slide all the way down the drain to New Orleans in the fall