Harold Examiner

HAROLD EXAMINER
(Robert Morgan Fisher/Extended Family Music-BMI)

Afternoon paper on my doorstep
Elysian Fields of Camarillo across the street
This was back when Camarillo was a dumping ground for crazies
State Hospital, Charlie Parker's grim defeat
The Rolling Stones had just been busted
Tet New Year Indochina - living hell
Summer of love mortally wounded at a motel out in Memphis
Finished off at the Ambassador Hotel
Let's pretend our arms are threshers
This alfalfa soft as a prisoner's prayer
Lay back in the paddock, green stalks clenched between our teeth
Kenny said he'd race me from here to there
All at once, we came upon a clearing
With a bunch of potted plants all in a row
And other plants much taller, growing straight out of the ground
Kenny turned to me and said: Hey --whaddya know?

(CHORUS)
And the ghost of Charlie Parker looking down
Blesses all the children of the town
God's beard is a cloud, I whispered to myself
every Saturday night watching Adam-12, one Adam-12

It was just about that time that a paperboy
named Harold rode up upon his bike
We were scared cause Harold was a lot bigger than us
But it turned out Kenny knew Harold's younger brother Mike
Harold casually got down off his bike
Lit a menthol cigarette which we declined
Hills Brothers Coffee can full of water inside his paper pouch
Harold looked like he had something on his mind
He said this thing was a secret garden
For some kind of a high school special science fair
I have to go up north this weekend to San Francisco, he said
Would you mind watering the plants while I'm up there?
Well, what kind of plants? we said
They don't seem to us much more than little weeds
Harold laughed and said, You got it and he paid us fifty cents
But don't mention it to anyone – there's no need

(CHORUS)

Harold split and we took one of the little potted plants
To a scoutmaster neighbor named Larry Hoops
Larry jumped on the phone and said "I appear to have a plant
that resembles marijuana" and Kenny and I looked at each other and said, "Oops"
Every cop in Camarillo converged upon our street
We were held up as 4th Grade Royalty
And the look on Harold's face as they led him off in cuffs
Was like he wished he'd paid us more for loyalty
Kenny took his quarter and invested
In an early death from AIDS and prescription pills
Sometimes late at night I drive up the 101 and cruise old
Built on Elysian Fields
I hardly ever read the paper anymore
None of the news seems to make a lick of sense
And anyway I think we've all gone well past the point
Of ever making ever any meaningful amends

(CHORUS)