Jack O Ray's Customers

They come here after work each day
To drink their fill and spend their pay
To merry make and poker play
In the uptown pub of Jack O Ray.

The old familiar foul mouth sound
Of low class public house abound
The coarse, crude barroom voice of sin
The obscene talk of drunken men.

The barmaid a pretty dame
A honey blond of well built frame
Serves them glasses of liquor, stout and beer
And accepts their money with a thank you dear.

The owner of the bar big Jack O Ray
Has just celebrated his thirtieth birthday
Weighing sixteen stone and six foot tall
With two broad shoulders like a wall.

He has yet to take a bride
The young barmaid is his pride
The folk who live in this town say
That he will marry her some day.

Jack O is a stingy bloke
He does not drink or even smoke
The people living in this town
Say he's the richest man around.

Close to the bar sits old Sam Greene
Sixty years of life he's seen
His leisure time is spent in here
Drinking whiskey and pints of beer.

Sam as grey as a mountain goat
Wears a shabby overcoat
A baggy pants and worn shoes
His only joy in life is booze.

His son, his daughter and his wife
Who with him led a hungry life
Left him many years ago
And to where they went nobody know.

Playing poker is young Frank Kane
He lives down in Elbow lane
Gambling runs in this man's blood
It comes from his dead father Jud.

With reddish hair and eyes of brown
The greatest gin drinker in town
It's the heavy drinkers like young Frank
That Jack O for his wealth can thank.

The two King brothers Phil and Bill
They live up by Chester hill
The Punter Kings is their nickname
And gambling is their favourite game.

Glass cutters they are by trade
Men of skill and highly paid
They often have to walk home from the greyhound track
As they do not have the bus fare back.

In a melancholy mood is Ronnie Drum
He has got a taste for rum
He has led a lonely life
Since the death of Kate his wife.

His wife she was a suicide case
A life of stress she could not face
Frogmen brought the woman he wed
From the dark deep river bed.

Drinking stout is Jack O Brien
He makes a living selling moonshine
In the book of law the moonshine maker
Is branded as a tax evader and law breaker.

A slender man with raven hair
And hardy as a mountain hare
Like all the moonshine making men
He's not an easy one to pen.

To make the liquor he uses a still
He brews it by a mountain rill
In a lonely heathery place
Uninhabited by the human race.

Some of those who make and sell moonshine
Are in the jailhouse serving time
With a wife and three children to feed
It is a risky life he lead.

Dark haired brown eyed young Nell Dean
She's known as Miss Scandal Queen
She's a low class girl of vice
Who rents her body for a price.

Her dad's in jail for larceny
For stealing others property
And her forty year old mother Ann
Is living with her new love man.

And though she's still in life's teenage stage
Just barely nineteen years of age
It would seem that lucifer in hell
Is waiting for the soul of Nell.

Paying for her drinks is Michael Grace
A pervert with a freckled face
With long black hair and twisted smile
They should have named him Michael Vile.

Even his marriage was ill fated
He and his wife are separated
After three months of marriage he lost her trust
Due to his love for liquor and pleasure lust.

Drinking whiskey is big Jim Flynn
One of the town's best labouring men
He leaves most of his hard earned pay
To money hungry Jack O Ray.

A batchelor in his forty first year
He loves the barroom atmosphere
A simple man of honesty
His only fault booze gluttony.

The Reidy twins from Chester row
The twenty year olds Jim and Joe
Both around five foot eight with curly brown hair
There has seldom been a more look alike pair.

If they have one claim to renown
It's for gulping shots of whiskey down
A shot of whiskey they can drink
Near faster than the eye could blink.

It's closing time big Jack O shout
Folk drink your drinks the time is out
I was caught open after hours before
And that won't happen anymore.

And so Jack O's customers go home
With their pockets empty and stomachs blown
They had slaked their thirst and drank their fill
And left their cash in Jack O's till.

In Jack O's public house uptown
The doors were locked the blinds pulled down
As Jack O counted with delight
The takings of a busy night.