Got out of prison back in ´86 and I found a wife
Walked the clean and narrow
Just trying to stay out and stay alive
Got a job at the rendering plant, it isn´t going to make me rich

In the darkness before dinner comes
Sometimes I can feel the itch

I got a cold mind to go tripping across that thin line
I´m sick of doing straight time

My uncle´s at the evening table
Makes his living running hot cars
Slips me a hundred dollar bill says
"Charlie you best remember who your friends are"

I got a cold mind to go tripping across that thin line
I´m sick of doing straight time

Eight years in it feels like you´re going to die
You get used to anything

Sooner or later it just becomes your life

Kitchen floor in the evening tossing my little babies high
Mary´s smiling but she´s watching me out of the corner of her eye
Seems you can´t get any more than half free
I step out onto the front porch and suck the cold air deep inside of me

I got a cold mind to go tripping across that thin line
I´m sick of doing straight time

In the basement hunting gun and a hacksaw
Sip a beer and thirteen inches of barrel drop to the floor

Come home in the evening, can´t get the smell from my hands
Lay my head down on the pillow and
Go drifting off into foreign lands