Year 1949 (MCMXLIX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar.
Sterling Hayden (born Sterling Relyea Walter, March 26, 1916 – May 23, 1986) was an American actor and author. For most of his career as a leading man, he specialized in westerns and film noir, such as Johnny Guitar, The Asphalt Jungle and The Killing. Later on he became noted as a character actor for such roles as Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). He also played the Irish American policeman, Captain McCluskey, in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather in 1972, and the novelist Roger Wade in 1973's The Long Goodbye. At six feet five inches (196 cm), he was taller than most actors.
He was born in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, to George and Frances Walter, who named him Sterling Relyea Walter. After his father died, he was adopted at the age of nine by James Hayden and renamed Sterling Walter Hayden. He grew up in coastal towns of New England, and as a child lived in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., and Maine, where he attended Wassookeag School in Dexter, Maine.
Carry me up them stairs,
Put my white socks on,
And my pretty song, you like,
My blue nail polish.
"What is all this?", you said,
"The mess upstairs,
Don't be scared"
Daddy dearest, you know,
How I like to take trips.
Pops first stop at the K-Mart,
Buy me my peach lipgloss,
Cigarettes and lolipops,
Mad magazines, and white socks.
All in your car for,
Our trip across the USA.
We gonna party,
Like it's 1949,
We in the Pontiac,
From July to July.
It's a flower motel nation,
Day and night on our last vacation,
We gonna see it all,
Before we say goodbye.
Daddy likes Blackpool,
Pleasure beach and roadstops,
Baby likes some Swiss Apps,
Souvenir giftshops.
Late night, midnight,
Radio show talks,
Daddy, baby,
Big jail break.
Ponytail and lolipops,
Dinerettes and sodapops.
New blue bathing suite,
Ruched tops and cadillacs.
Blue lake car to dunks,
Hop skotch, shit talk,
Alabama hard knocks,
Motel dresslocks.
We gonna party,
Like it's 1949,
We in the Pontiac,
From July to July.
It's a motel flower nation,
Day and night on our last vacation,
We gonna see it all,
It was 1949 and I was just a kid
In that hot southern sunshine
Work was all we did
And that white cotton dust
Would drift around our heels
Them old combines would rust
Just sitting in the fields
I can still see his face old beyond his years
Furrowed and traced with hard work and tears
I watched him walk back from the barn
And saw it shine in his hands
But I knew he meant no harm
He was a good and honest man
Well I guess it was the war
That turned around his mind
Or the fact that we were poor
With nothin' down the line
Or mama's hungry eyes
Every time we went to town
For all the things she'd like to buy
He'd have to turn her down
I guess no one really cared
Cause no one really knew
All the darkness and despair
That he was going through
And now I walk this hillside
With tombstones so pale
And I'm wondering why
I was left to tell this tale
It was 1949