Story Behind the Song
I was thinking about Heroes vs. Anti-Heroes... remebered this event and thought of how he was a hero to me as a child while he was excersising a subtle form of racism.
The line "Driving home on the I-97, the cars race for the border and the trees rise up to heaven." will change to "Driving home on the I-94, the trees rise up to heaven and the cars race for the border". Not as tidy of a rhyme but more historically correct.
Lyrics
Angel with A Pistol by Ian Gifford -copyright 2002
I was twelve years old, I was in Detroit City
With white brick gone brown, It was the slums own kind of pretty... The
junkyard fella asks my pop ,"where's the young boy gone"
Dad points down to the diner, Said "he won't be long"
The young man tells my dad, "you small town's folk be damned"
and then he takes to running, with his pistol close at hand
I am standing at a counter, I'm just waiting on some food
got five dollars in my hand, and I'm feeling pretty good
My dad walks in with the man at his side,
They nod as the cop looks at the gun he doesn't hide
The cop nods back and the man pulls down his coat,
I got the food and we all walked out
I was just a young boy
in a big foreign land
and an angel at my back
with a pistol close at hand
Driving home on the I-97,
The cars race for the border, the trees rise up to heaven
My dad starts to tell me of all that took place,
He smiled at the look of surprise on my face
Seems the man told my dad,
that Detroit's a place where still
you should never send a white boy out,
with a five dollar bill
I was just a young boy
in a vast foreign land
and an angel at my back
with a pistol close at hand
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