Lyrics: The Ghosts Of Saturday Night
Album: The Heart Of Saturday Night
Artist: Tom Waits
 

(after hours at napoleone’s pizza house)

A cab combs the snake,
Tryin’ to rake in that last night’s fare,
And a solitary sailor
Who spends the facts of his life
Like small change on strangers…

Paws his inside p-coat pocket
For a welcome twenty-five cents,
And the last bent butt from a package of kents,
As he dreams of a waitress with maxwell house eyes
And marmalade thighs with scrambled yellow hair.

Her rhinestone-studded moniker says, "irene"
As she wipes the wisps of dishwater blonde from her eyes

And the texaco beacon burns on,
The steel-belted attendant with a ‘ring and valve special’…
Cryin’ "fill’er up and check that oil"
"you know it could be a distributor and it could be a coil."

The early mornin’ final edition’s on the stands,
And that town cryer’s cryin’ there with nickels in his hands.
Pigs in a blanket sixty-nine cents,
Eggs – roll ’em over and a package of kents,
Adam and eve on a log, you can sink ’em damn straight,
Hash browns, hash browns, you know i can’t be late.

And the early dawn cracks out a carpet of diamond
Across a cash crop car lot
Filled with twilight coupe devilles,
Leaving the town in a-keeping
Of the one who is sweeping
Up the ghost of saturday night…