Stories On A Dime

( after Langston Hughes )  
    
     
Ever since as a man full grown    
With some things of my own,    
From the cost-of-living wages    
Of my job of six days, is    
     
How I came to own a TV set    
From a pawnshop bet,    
Made by a son of a white man’s    
Cancelled installment plan.    
     
 But what I see on local news,    
Of cigarettes and booze,    
Will never be like yesterday   
When Grandpa went away.    
     
A nickel steak at roadside eats,    
Fried eggs you couldn’t beat.    
Flapjacks, like dining at the Ritz,    
(Run by black widow Mrs Fritz),    
Pie a la mode, two bits.    
     
Five dollars lasted for a week,    
No high life of a sheik.    
But for the girls back in the day    
He’d always pay their way.    
     
He had a car and as he passed    
To Heaven, cheap on gas,    
He didn’t need a graveyard plot    
But traveled there a lot.