Southern California Wants To Be Western New York Lyrics - Dar Williams

There's a part of the country 

Could drop off tomorrow in an earthquake 

Yeah, it's out there on the cutting edge 

The people move, the sidewalks shake 

And there's another part of the country 

With a land that gently creaks and thuds 

Where the heavy snows make faucets leak 

In bathrooms with free-standing tubs 

They're in houses that are haunted 

With the kids who lie awake and think about 

All the generations past 

Who used to use that dripping sink 

Sometimes one place wants 

To slip into the other just to see 

What it's like to trade its demons 

For the restless ghost of Mrs. Ogilvy 

Used to pick the mint from her front yard 

To dress the Sunday pork 

Sometimes southern California wants 

To be western New York 

Wants to have a family business 

In sheet metal or power tools 

And it wants to have a diner 

Where the coffee tastes like diesel fuel 

And it wants to find the glory of a town 

They say has hit the skids 

And it wants to have a snow day 

That will turn its parents into kids 

And it's embarrassed, but it's lusting 

After a suny student with mousy brown hair who is 

Taking out the compost 

Making coffee in long underwear 

And southern California says 

To save a place, I'll meet you there 

And it tried to pack up its miata 

All it could fit was a prayer 

Sometimes the stakes are bogus 

Sometimes the fast lane hits a fork 

Sometimes southern California wants 

To be western New York 

Tempe, Arizona thinks the Everglades 

Are greener and wetter 

And Washington D.C. thinks 

That Atlanta integrated better 

But I think that southern California 

Has more pain that we can say 

'Cause it wants to travel back in time 

But it just can't leave L.A. 

But now I hear they've got a theme park planned 

Designed to make you gasp and say 

Bet that crumbling mill town 

Was a booming mill town in its day 

Old investors scoff at this, but the young ones 

Hope they'll take a chance 

And they promise it will make more dough 

Than Mickey Mouse in northern France 

And the planners got an opening day 

A town historian will host 

And the waitresses look like waitresses 

Who want to leave for the West Coast 

And they'll have puttering on rainy weekends 

Autumn days that make you feel sad 

They'll have hundred year old plumbing 

And the family you never had 

And a Hudson River clean-up concert 

And a bundle-bearing stork 

And I hear they've got a menu planned 

It's tres western New York, western New York