East Of Gary 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 Lyrics 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