Big Yeallow Streetsweeper

Yeah yeah

I'm gonna tell you a story that happened to me in 1980



You know sometimes I don't know right from wrong

I, oh as my mother said, "I go off my ka-zip"

The psychiatrists they have the words for it, but



I traded my TV and my VCR

Didn't have no use for 'em anymore

For a guitar

Named that guitar Little Freaky



I was gonna change my name from Root Boy Slim

To "Guitar Get Down And Be Guitar Get Down With Little Freaky"



I decided I'd take that guitar up from Florida to Georgia in my Thunderbird

Maybe I could get a lesson and learn how to play a little bit

I wanted to marry that guitar



So I took that guitar to Macon, Georgia

Took it around to feel her in the old country places

Where my ancestors come over

In King George's time



And then I took that guitar up to Atlanta

I was in the Atlanta Hilton

Somebody had stole the keys to my Thunderbird

My car was locked up, I couldn't get my guitar



I went crazy for Little Freaky

I could hear Little Freaky callin to me

So I busted up and got in a big fight in the parking garage

And had to leave town



But as I was walking out of Atlanta Georgia

A strange thing happened to me

One of the strangest things that ever happened to me

A lot of strange things have happened to Root Boy Slim



I saw this

Streetsweeper, streetsweeper on a construction site

I walked over to it

And lordy, it had the keys in it



I didn't have no way to get back to Flagler Beach, Florida

I-I-I

I guess I was a little crazy

But I climbed up in that streetsweeper

And it had the key in it



I turned the key over

Yes it started right up

I'd never driven no construction machinery before

So I fooled with the levers and I fooled with the pedals



Then I got it going forward

Went down a big embankment, across the superhighway

Nobody gonna get in my way with that big old streetsweeper

Big yellow streetsweeper

Sweep for me, in Atlanta, Georgia



I drove from Atlanta, sweeping up a storm

I put that sweeper down

I was sweeping, yes I was

Yeah yeah, I drove out of town



But then I stopped off at the Jimmy Carter Center

Yes I was looking for work

That's where they got me



They put me in the pre-trial detention center

Say the boy crazy

Steal a streetsweeper?

Yeah I did two months



Two months in the pre-trial detention center

But people you know

I had so much fun on that streetsweeper

I think it was worth it