You were throwing your shoes right up over the wire You were rolling out Easy Bake Ovens and tires Another whole day on the Bucks County plain Clouds rolling in, it's feeling like rain Back in the yards and the woods by the pool The leaves were on fire when I came home from school Singing a song that I wrote in myself Singing that I could be something else You were throwing your shoes right up over the wire I was sitting there watching on half-buried tires Scratching on sidewalks with fingers and stone Waiting for time, feeling alone Taking out pins in the cushions inside The rain falling down on the telephone wire Falling farther and farther away Those were the days of the model airplanes Shooting up rockets for neighborhood fame You on the ground, the remote in your hand I was sinking on down, my feet in the sand The rock and roll babysitter's tales Of nights with the boys running off of the rails They'd spend the whole night on abandoned farms Burning up in each other's arms You were throwing your shoes right up over the wire You were setting those Easy Bake Ovens on fire I was carving my name on a chalkboard with nails Waiting for somebody else to be there Outside, the dim suburban homes With their lawns full of ashtrays and their buckets of phones Ringing off mothers in houses all day Back then we had to be cool But nobody taught me the rules So I just wrote it all down On the inside of my fast food paperboard crown Riding bikes before I learned about brakes Around and around those cul-de-sac lanes The teens rolling by in their giant green cars Driving like rain, they were kissing like stars You were throwing your shoes right up over the wire You were building those Tinkertoy castle empires Melting your crayons over tables of flame I was feeling alone, I was feeling insane Dad took a picture on August the ninth Of us with the newspaper and the headline 'Ford Steps Up; Nixon Resigns'