The Boy I Used To Be Lyrics

When I was a little boy I lived in a little town

West of the Mississippi near the Maramec iron ground

There was a Pabst Blue Ribbon sign and a Western Auto store

And the SLSF railway but that don't run through there no more

It was a simple small town life where boys are brought up to dream

Of scoring touchdowns on Friday night for the high school football team

We'd go swimming in the river, fishing down by the creek

We see more out here in a year than them city boys do all week

But my family we did not live there long we left in 1983

But now I know there was so much more to see

But that little town will always live in me

The innocence of the way I was and the boy I used to be

Now a man can easily lose himself in this wild and wicked life

The boy inside might run and hide in the face of struggle and strife

But for all its pain all its strain life is magic yes it's true

Who'd of thought back then that somewhere somehow I would meet someone like you

So no matter how I fall, whatever heartache I might find

For my future's sake I can take from what I left behind

The town has now grown somehow even greater just because

It keeps alive my childhood and the boy I once was

Now I have learned not to want from folks things they cannot give

I've learned to live simply so that others may simply live

But I've seen so many fellas taken down by their own hand

They forget what it was to be a boy in their quest to become a man

So an all night drive across this land seems a mighty small price to pay

To gaze and wonder 'fore it all fades away

I'm gonna do it for the joy of doing, I'm gonna do the best I can

And remember the boy I used to be is still who I am