What Work Is

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[Verse 1]
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Yeah, I used to work with a guy named Frankie Acosta
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We were butter strippers down at the Challenge Creamery
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Striping the cardboard off of seventy pound cubes of butter
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Yeah, it was hot back then summer of nineteen sixty-three


[Verse 2]
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And Frankie, man, he'd get so angry
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He'd say, "See what the women make me do"
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Then he'd break of a splinter from a dirty wooden pallet
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And stick it like a knife in one of those big old butter cubes


[Chorus]
            Am
That's what work is
            F
That's what love is
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A little pleasure and a little misery
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Now every time it gets hard out here
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I think of L.A. back in nineteen sixty-three
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Hey, hey


[Verse 3]
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Then I got a job working for the city of Englewood
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Running chipper, chipping limbs off of trees
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I worked with a guy named Crazy Dave Mackland
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And one day he almost ran a tractor over me


[Verse 4]
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We were out chopping weeds near South Central
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When the riots broke out and the skies turned a fiery red and brown
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And I called up my girlfriend on a payphone and said "Baby, I love you
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But, ah, I think god's gonna finally burn Gomorra down

She said


[Chorus]
            Am
That's what work is
            F
That's what love is
            Am                                     G     F
You build a house of straw and the flames lick the sky
          G              Am
Now every time I fall in love out here
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I think of L.A. back in nineteen sixty-seven


[Instrumental]
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[Verse 5]
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I finally got a job driving a rose truck
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Santa Barbara, midnight, to L.A., Fifth and Main
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All jacked up on coffee, cheap speed and doughnuts
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Walking around the L.A. Flower Market in the rain


[Verse 6]
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And every morning I'd eat breakfast at The Pantry down on Figueroa
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The waiters were always old time, ex-cons
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Then we'd load the truck back up with empty rose boxes
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And drive on up the coast through the California dawn


[Chorus]
            Am
That's what work is
            F
That's what love is
              Am               G       F
Two eggs over easy on a T-bone steak
      G              Am
Every time I see the sunrise on the ocean
           C                           G
I think of L.A. back in nineteen sixty-eight


[Chorus]
            Am
That's what work is
            F
That's what love is
         Am                        G    F
A little pleasure and a little misery
          G            Am
Now every time it gets hard out here
           C                           G       Am
I think of L.A. back in nineteen sixty-three