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                   Michael  (a.k.a. Pig's Real Life Blues)
                           by Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan
   
   Well you know,
   I left my home when I was
   seventeen years of age and I
   started hitchhiking from
   San Francisco down to
   L.A.  And I,
   I met this man.  He give me a ride
   and finally dropped me by the side and said, 'Here, son,
   have a dime.' 
   And I said, 'Thank you, mister.' 
   And he went on his way. 
   So I got down in the big city and
   I was trying to get myself a job. 
   Yes, I was. 
   But there wasn't
   no jobs around. 
   I couldn't seem to find
   any way to make ends meet. 
   And then this man in a gas station,
   he says, 'Son,
   you need yourself a job.'  And I said, 'Mister, I surely do.' 
   He said, 'Well come on in and I'll give you a dollar and a quarter an hour.' 
   And I sure was happy at that time. 
   So I worked in the gas station for a while. 
   Got myself a little place to live,
   yes I did. 
   Things were going pretty good,
   until one day,
   I kind of got down on my luck, and,
   a dollar and a quarter an hour,
   if you can't,
   if you can't work more than three or four hours on overtime,
   you need a lot of money,
   a lot more money than you're getting, to keep yourself alive. 
   And I know you do. 
   So,
   I met up with these guys, and we went
   walking around the neighborhood,
   find ourselves a gas station. 
   We figured we checked it out pretty good. 
   So we decided we was gonna rob this gas station. 
   Because there was no other way to get more money. 
   And we made our plans very carefully.
   And then one night,
   when there was no one around,
   we went over there,
   on that side of town,
   and we broke into the gas station
   and we robbed the cash register. 
   And just at the time that we were making our escape,
   here come a policeman
   walking up the street. 
   He yelled 'Halt!', and we got scared. 
   And I threw the money up in the air,
   and we started running
   and he started too. 
   He hollered 'Halt!',
   and then he began to shoot. 
   I was lucky. 
   I got over a fence. 
    My other friend
   made it around the corner. 
   But my other buddy,
   he went down. 
   And Michael,
   you should have stopped, when the man told you. 
   Because if that bullet wouldn't have hit you,
   you would have been living. 
   And what I'm trying to say now,
   is that,
   if you find yourself in a situation,
   where,
   you can get killed or live,
   yeah, if your,
   if your pride will let you. 
   Poor Michael went down by a policeman's bullet. 
   He didn't have to go down, if a he would've stopped. 
   He had some pride,
   wouldn't live with that running, but now,
   Michael's in the ground. 
   Michael, why did you keep on running? 
   Michael, your pride done got you killed. 
   You should've knowed that cop had had a pistol on his side,
   why didn't you stop before you was killed?
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