Lord, his daddy was an honest man   Just a red dirt, Georgia farmer   And his momma lived her short life   Having kids and baling hay      He had fifteen years   And he ached inside to wander   So, he jumped a freight at Waycross   And wound up in L.A.      The cold nights had no pity   On that Waycross, Georgia, farm boy   Most days he went hungry   And then the summer came      He met a girl known on the strip   As San Francisco's Mabel Joy   Destitution's child   Born of an L.A. street called 'Shame'      Growing up came quietly   In the arms of Mabel Joy   Laughter found their mornings   Brought a meaning to his life      And the night before she left   Aleep came and left that Waycross, country boy   With dreams of Georgia cotton   And a California wife      Sunday morning found him standing   'Neath the red light at her door   When a right cross sent him reeling   Put him face down on the floor      And in place of his Mabel Joy   He found a merchant mad marine   Who growled, "Your Georgia neck is red   But sonny, you're still green"      He turned twenty-one   In a gray rock federal prison   The old judge had no mercy   On that Waycross, country boy      Staring at those four gray walls   In silence he would listen   To the midnight freight   He knew would take him back to Mabel Joy      Sunday morning found him lying   'Neath the red light at her door   With a bullet in his side, he cried   "Have you seen Mabel Joy?"      Stunned and shaken someone said   "Son, she don't live here no more   No, she left this house four years, today   They say she's looking for some Georgia farm boy