I grew up on the Indiana side of Chicago  With the rusty steel mills belching in the westward wind  I watched Mom and Dad trying to clean their sorrow  With my brothers and me at old Lake Michigan    There’s a little boy  He’s got big brown eyes  He’s got swimming trunks ‘bout twice his size  Looking at a steel mill sunset  Skipping a stone, "hey, ain’t you a little young  To feel so alone?"    Well they changed the name of my hometown  When we moved away  Now it’s more than words that I don’t recognize  That kid down at the filling station  Tried to keep my change from a twenty  I could see that cold assurance in his eyes    Hey you need ten dollars for the rainy day?  Save and go to college or just get away  Or you could spend that money on a two-day stone  Oh, there are worse things in this world than being alone  Let me tell you now…    So, if you’re driving from Chicago, east of Gary  And you find a fallen town that has two names  There’ll be no one to possibly remember  A little lonesome brown-eyed boy who went by James    Oh the mill’s shut down  But the air’s still sour  You get a hotel room  You gotta pay by the hour  Oh the good old days are just good and gone  Like autumn leaves on a burning lawn    I grew up on the Indiana side of Chicago  With the rusty steel mills belching in the westward wind    these lyrics are submitted by burkul