From the Vaults: On a sunny Derby Day

On a sunny Derby Day

Milwaukee
the East Side

up by the pagoda-looking gas station

around 1971
got lost

got lost just
a few blocks from home.

Saw these placed

I had never seen before

the brown faces that

I knew from the buses.

let's see
how's this
going to go?

And kids came out

climbing over rubble

singing "hippies in town"

singing "hippies in town"

me and dave and jim did
a sort of 

cold tremble

seemed like sirens

everywhere in the air

we were over the milwaukee river
and when a car engine would start
it was like a slow explosion
as we found our way

bippity-bop-slop-drop
back to the well-known

main drag
say
east ogden ave

Now

on Mission Hill

with many in their graves
but not the 3 musketters

and there is an old hippie

fellow traveller playing

I'm a Little Mixed Up
Key to the Highway
Cool it Down
First I look at the Purse
Dead Flowers

Im Ready.
-Jack Vaughan

alt version from 2008