Living In The Future

For some reason yesterday, I was reminded of the John Prine song, "Living in the Future"

I found some liner notes this morning where Prine tells us a little about writing the song.

"...the idea I had came from Parade magazine in the Sunday papers. When I was growing up, it seemed like once a year some guy would write a story about how this is the way your city is going to look in 20 years. And the only city that ever looked like that was Seattle, and they built all that for the World's Fair. None of the other places had monorails. Instead, everybody's standing in soup lines or looking for jobs."

...(first stanza and chorus only)....

Living In The Future
(Originally named "Jumpin Jehosaphat")
© John Prine

Jehosaphat the mongrel cat
Jumped off the roof today
Some would say he fell but I could tell
He did himself away
His eyes weren't bright like they were the night
We played checkers on the train
God Bless his soul he was a tootsie roll
But he's a dead cat just the same

Chorus:
We are living in the future
I'll tell you how I know
I read it in the paper
Fifteen years ago
We're all driving rocket ships
And talking with our minds
And wearing turquoise jewelry
And standing in soup lines
We are standing in soup lines


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