Guns Under the Counter

Guns Under the Counter

"Well, good for you.
But we have something too."
So said my aunt

A bowling alley and lunch counter
Filled with fellas on their lunch break
From the Western Electric plant at a slant across the street
And next door when So-and-So's men would come in, and the man himself very often

It was guns under the counter every time
Guns under the counter every time
Guns under the counter every time
And bowling on the second floor

Very often he was there himself
And I, of course, had a special small ball as a little girl,
And didn't I grow up, didn't I grow up to be captain of the Morton girls bowling team? I did!
Though I don't attach much importance to that now, or then
Then riding the old Garfield El downtown
And on up to State Street
And back to guns under the counter
Guns under the counter every time
Guns under the counter
And bowling on the second floor

I never liked Douglas park
And no one likes it now
But that's neither here nor there
There, or here
West of Crawford, where it is I stayed
Chicago straights alliterates
North, and south
I lived in the Ms
But it was down on the south side
Dr. Peter Pane and his brother had their doughnut factory
And I mention it now because

That one day
Now I wasn't there, we were in Davenport at that time
Some north side Irish bullets came zipping through that window
In Cicero
Never stand at a window
And past the counter
Looking for those men
Who had their guns behind the counter
And you could smell the boiled cabbage on those bullets
One of them managed to hit a young pinsetter in the leg
Wouldn't you know it
But luckily Panagoulis
Dr. Peter Pane
Was there to see to it
He took some special blackberry filling right out of his lunch bag
And applied it to the young man's wound
You see, Dr. Peter Pane was an interesting man
And an even more interesting doctor
As he would use no material or remedy that wasn't used in the manufacture
Of his doughnuts down on 82nd and Kedzie with his brother.
But he tempered this by the fact that he would rarely use ingredients
That didn't have some medicinal purpose
Or so he thought

Here in the doughnut factory
They have confectioner's sugar
So sweet it was caustic
And chocolate so bitter that it could kill typhus
Glazing so shiny
It could set back glaucoma
And filling so filling,
You didn't need stitches
The same special blackberry filling that was applied to the young man's wound
Blackberry filling that came straight from Dr. Peter Pane's lunch bag

We were in Davenport
With a big restaurant downtown
And I once kept a jackrabbit in the back yard
And I'd walk across the river to Rock Island to Greek school
On a fine fall day
And I'd look up at the sky
And down at the river
But Davenport changed its name to Hooverville
So to speak, and we had to go to Chicago to move in with my aunt