Written by Mike Cooley
A semi-autobiographical tale, this unflinchingly raw song details the frustrations of a seventeen-year-old boy who needs to drive 26 miles to Zip City where his girlfriend lives ("Don't know why I put up with his shit / When you don't put out and Zip City's so far away"). The narrator is not particularly likable: He runs his car into a ditch and his dad needs to come get them out, and he reflects on a variety of plaints. The RJ Reynolds company has an economic grip on the town, his girlfriend's sister won't sleep with him, his girlfriend's brother is in the closet, and she'll probably stay in this dead-end town all her life, while he has bigger plans. "So keep your drawers on, girl, it ain't worth the fight / By the time you drop them I'll be gone / And you'll be right where they fall the rest of your life." She says he takes her for granted, but he just sneers that "for granted" is a pretty big word for a fifteen year old country girl. It's as harrowing in its way as any Springsteen song of desperate souls and outlaws on the road.
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