losing perspective in the Juarez rain

Hugh Sloan

----------------------- [excerpt] ---------------- He wished he were in Bernstein's place, wished he could write.  Maybe then he could express what had been going through his mind.  Not the cold, hard facts of Watergate necessarily -- that wasn't really what was important.  

But what it was like for young men and women to come to Washington because they believed in something and then to be inside and see how things worked and watch their own ideals disintegrate.

     He and his wife believed in the same things they had before they came to Washington.  Many of their friends at the White House did, too, but those people had made a decision that you could still believe in the same things and yet adapt yourself.  

After all, the goals were unchanged, you were still working for what you believed in, right?  People in the White House believed they were entitled to do things differently, to suspend the rules, because they were fulfilling a mission; that was the only important thing, the mission.  

It was easy to lose perspective, Sloan said.  


He had seen it happen.  He and his wife wanted to get out of Washington before they lost theirs.

_______________________________________

All the President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.  1974.  Simon & Schuster.

_____________________________________

When you're lost in the rain in Juarez

And it's Easter-time too

And your gravity fails

And negativity don't pull you through

Don't put on any airs

When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue

They got some hungry women there

And they really make a mess outta you...

______________________________

Lyric excerpt from "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues"
next-to-last song on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album

____________________________________

-30-

he said I never engaged in this kind of thing before

[excerpt, All The President's Men] ----------------- From one incident in early September, the reporters were made aware that the fears were not groundless.

     They had picked up a copy of the committee's latest expenditure report, which listed the names of all salaried employees.  Bernstein noticed the name of someone he had once met and called her for lunch.  

He suggested half a dozen places where they could meet and not be seen, but she insisted on a sandwich shop where dozens of Nixon campaign workers were at the tables.  

When they sat down, she explained:  "I'm being followed.  It's open here and doesn't look like I'm hiding anything.  People won't talk on the phones; it's terrible."


     Bernstein asked her to be calm.  He thought she was overdramatizing.


     "I wish I was," she said.  "They know everything at the committee.  They know that the indictments will be down in a week and that there will only be seven.  Once, another person went back to the DA because the FBI didn't ask her the right questions.  That night her boss knew about it.  I always had one institution I believed in -- the FBI.  No more.

     "I've done my duty as a good citizen.  I went back to the DA, too.  But I'm a fatalist now.  It'll never come out, the whole truth.  You'll never get the truth.  

You can't get it by reporters talking to just the good people.  

They know you've been out talking to people at night.  Somebody from the press office came up to our office today and said, 'I sure wish I knew who in this committee had a link to Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.'


     "The FBI never even asked me if I was at the committee over the weekend of the break-in.  I was there almost the whole time.  Odle didn't tell them everything he knew.  He kept removing records.  I don't know if he destroyed them or not.  

He would tell everybody to get out of the room and then close the door.  

Then he'd leave with the records.

     "Everything else I know is hearsay," she said.  "I've done my duty, I told the DA. ... The whole thing is being very well covered up and nobody will ever know what happened."

     The Prince George's County Police Department could do a better job than the FBI, and she was through with presidential politics forever.  She asked Bernstein to walk back to the office with her, to avoid any appearance of furtiveness.  

While they were waiting to cross the street at 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, Maurice Stans pulled up to 1701, across the avenue, in his limousine.


     "He was an honest man before all this started," she said.  "Now he's lying too."

_____________________________

All the President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.  1974.  Simon & Schuster.

_______________________________

Oh! - God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"

Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"

God say, "No."  Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, 
but --

The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Well Abe says, "Where you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61"

...

...Now the rovin' gambler, he was very bored
He was tryin' to create a next world war
He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor
He said I never engaged in this kind of thing before
But yes I think it can be very easily done
We'll just put some bleachers out in the sun
And have it out on Highway 61

_______________________________________

"Highway 61 Revisited" - title song from Bob Dylan's album

_________________________________

-30-

he left because he suspected the worst

[excerpt, All The President's Men]

--------------------------- So Bernstein had rested his bike against the wall of the little guardhouse at the entrance and not bothered to lock it.  He was there to hear Vice President Agnew talk about cutting red tape to get help to victims of the Great Flood caused by Hurricane Agnes.  And he had run into Ken Clawson in the hallway.

     "You guys back at the Post are going to bark up the wrong tree one too many times on Watergate," Clawson had said.

*        *        *

     A few hours later, Hugh Sloan answered the door, looking as if he had just stepped out of the pages of Management Intern News.  Thirtyish, slim, hair nicely trimmed just long enough, blue blazer, muted shirt, rep tie, quite handsome, maybe too thin.

     "My wife told me to probably expect you," he said, and let Bernstein step out of the rain and into the hallway.  He left the door open.  "As you know, I haven't talked to the press."  It was stated apologetically.  That was a good sign.  One eye on the open door, Bernstein decided to shoot for the moon.  

The morning's story had changed the situation, he argued.  

People now knew that Sloan was not guilty in Watergate.  But Sloan knew who was, or at least he knew things that could lead to the guilty.  Now that part of the story had come out, Sloan should put the rest on record, clear his own name and let people know the truth.  

Maybe there was a legitimate explanation for the cash handed over to Liddy and John Mitchell's aides.  If there was, and that was the whole story, so be it.  Maybe things were a lot worse even than that day's story had suggested.  If they were worse...

     "They're worse," Sloan interrupted.  "That's why I left, because I suspected the worst."  Suddenly he looked wounded.  There seemed to be no vengeance, only hurt.  He was shaking his head.

     Then why not tell what he knew?  Now.  Publicly.  To keep others from getting hurt.  In the long run, it would help Nixon, Bernstein argued, because the President was going to be hurt badly if the coverup lasted much longer. 

     Sloan nodded.  He would like to, he said.  He really would.  But his lawyers had advised against it; whatever he said publicly might be used against him in any civil suit arising from his role as treasurer of the Nixon campaign.

     Bernstein resisted the temptation to advise Sloan to get a new lawyer; that's what he would do if he were innocent and in Sloan's place -- get a new lawyer and sue CRP.

     Sloan had also pledged to the prosecutors that he would not make any public statement before the Watergate trial.  So he was twice bound to remain silent, he said.

     How sure was Sloan that the prosecutors were on his side?

     He thought they were, he said, but he didn't have much faith in anybody any more. ------------------------------ [end, excerpt]

_____________________________________

All the President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.  1974.  Simon & Schuster.

________________________________

When your mother sends back all your invitations

And your father to your sister he explains

That you're tired of yourself and all of your creations

Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

Now when all of the flower ladies want back what they have lent you

And the smell of their roses does not remain

And all of your children start to resent you

Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

Now when all the clowns that you have commissioned

Have died in battle or in vain

And you're sick of all this repetition

Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

When all of your advisers heave their plastic

At your feet to convince you of your pain

Trying to prove that your conclusions should be more drastic

Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

Now when all the bandits that you turned your other cheek to

All lay down their bandanas and complain

And you want somebody you don't have to speak to

Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

_____________________________

"Queen Jane Approximately" - Song 6 on Highway 61 Revisited album by Bob Dylan

______________________________

-30-

walk like a camel

At the beginning of Woodward and Bernstein's book, All The President's Men, there's a "Cast of Characters."

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Richard M. Nixon

THE PRESIDENT'S MEN
Alfred C. Baldwin III        Security guard, Committee for the Re-election of the President (CRP)
Alexander P. Butterfield        Deputy Assistant to the President; aide to H.R. Haldeman
John J. Caulfield        

Staff aide to John Ehrlichman
Dwight L. Chapin        Deputy Assistant to the President; appointments secretary
Kenneth W. Clawson        Deputy Director of Communications, the White House
Charles W. Colson

Special Counsel to the President
Kenneth H. Dahlberg        Midwest Finance Chairman, CRP
John W. Dean III

Counsel to the President
John D. Ehrlichman        Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs
L. Patrick Gray III        Acting Director, FBI
H.R. Haldeman        Assistant to the President; White House Chief of Staff
E. Howard Hunt, Jr.        Consultant to the White House
Herbert W. Kalmbach        Deputy Finance Chairman, CRP; personal attorney to the President
Henry A. Kissinger        Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs


Richard G. Kleindienst        Attorney General of the United States
Egil Korgh, Jr.        Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs; aide to Ehrlichman
Frederick C. LaRue        Deputy Director, CRP; aide to John Mitchell
G. Gordon Liddy        Finance Counsel, CRP; former aide on John Ehrlichman's staff
Clark MacGregor        Campaign Director, CRP
Jeb Stuart Magruder        Deputy Campaign Director, CRP, former Haldeman aide and Deputy Director of White House Communications
Robert C. Mardian

Political Coordinator, CRP; former Assistant Attorney General
John N. Mitchell        Campaign Director, CRP; former Attorney General
Powell Moore        Deputy Press Director, CRP; former White House press aide
Robert C. Odle, Jr.        Director of Administration and Personnel, CRP; former White House staff aide
Kenneth W. Parkinson        Attorney  CRP

Herbert L. Porter        Scheduling Director, CRP; former aide to Haldeman
Kenneth Rietz        Youth Director, CRP
Donald H. Segretti

Attorney
Devan L. Shumway        Director of Public Affairs, CRP; former White House press aide
Hugh W. Sloan, Jr.        Treasurer, CRP; former aide to Haldeman
Maurice H. Stans        Finance Chairman, CRP; former Secretary of Commerce
Gordon C. Strachan        Staff assistant to Haldeman

Gerald Warren        Deputy Press Secretary to the President
David R. Young        Staff assistant, National Security Council; aide to Henry Kissinger, John Ehrlichman
Ronald L. Ziegler        Press Secretary to the President


THE BURGLARS
Bernard L. Barker
Virgilio R. Gonzalez
Eugenio R. Martinez
James W. McCord, Jr.
Frank A. Sturgis

THE PROSECUTION
Henry E. Petersen        Assistant Attorney General
Earl J. Silbert        Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; chief prosecutor
Donald E. Campbell        Assistant U.S. Attorney
Seymour Glanzer        Assistant U.S. Attorney

THE JUDGE
John J. Sirica        

Chief Judge, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

THE WASHINGTON POST
Katharine Graham        Publisher
Benjamin C. Bradlee        Executive Editor

Howard Simons        Managing Editor
Harry M. Rosenfeld        Metropolitan Editor
Barry Sussman        District of Columbia Editor

THE SENATOR
Sam J. Ervin, Jr.        Chairman, Senate Watergate Committee

-------------------------------------------

_______________________________

All the President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.  1974.  Simon & Schuster.

_____________________________

You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, "Who is that man?"
You try so hard
But you don't understand
Just what you'll say
When you get home

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?


You raise up your head
And you ask, "Is this where it is?"
And somebody points to you and says
"It's his"
And you say, "What's mine?"
And somebody else says, "Where what is?"
And you say, "Oh my God
Am I here all alone?"

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?


You hand in your ticket
And you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you
When he hears you speak
And says, "How does it feel 
To be such a freak?"
And you say, "Impossible"
As he hands you a bone

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?


       You have many contacts
       Among the lumberjacks
       To get you facts
       When someone attacks your imagination
       But nobody has any respect
       Anyway they already expect - you -
       To just give a check
       To -- tax-deductible charity organizations


You've been with the professors
And they've all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have 
Discussed lepers and crooks
You've been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
You're very well read
It's well known

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?


Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you
And then he kneels
He crosses himself
And then he clicks his high heels
And without further notice
He asks you how it feels
And he says, "Here is your throat back
Thanks for the loan"

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?


Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You'e a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?


Well, you walk into the room
Like a camel and then you frown
You put your eyes in your pocket
And your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law
Against you comin' around
You should be made
To wear earphones

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

_____________________________________

"Ballad of a Thin Man" - Song 5 on the first side of the Highway 61 Revisited album by Bob Dylan

___________________________________

-30-

blanket on my bed

Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, portraying Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in the 1976 film version of All the President's Men


[excerpt, All The President's Men]

     Meanwhile, Howard Hunt had not been seen since the day he had spoken briefly on the telephone to Woodward.  The FBI had assigned 150 agents to the search.  On July 7, the same day the Hunt Chappaquiddick story appeared in the Post, Hunt came in from the cold.  Several days later, Bernstein spoke to a Washington lawyer who knew William O. Bittman, Hunt's attorney.


     Bittman, the lawyer said, had received $25,000 in cash in a brown envelope to take Hunt's case.  The man was disturbed.  Bittman was a highly respected member of the bar, a partner in the prestigious firm of Hogan and Hartson, a former Justice Department attorney who had successfully prosecuted Jimmy Hoffa, the former president of the Teamsters' Union.

     "It's good information, that's all I can tell you about it," the man said.  There was one other thing.  At least $100,000 in CRP's budget was earmarked for "Convention Security," he said.  "The money is the key to this thing."

     Bernstein called Bittman.  He would not say how he had been retained.

     Had he gotten $25,000 cash in an envelope?  Bernstein asked.

     Bittman could not discuss any aspect of his involvement in the case, he said, but to Bernstein's surprise, he did not specifically deny it.

     Nevertheless, Woodward and Bernstein could not find anyone else who had even heard the story about money in a brown envelope.  They spent hours and hours getting nowhere, and not just on that question.

Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward

     Officials at the White House and CRP were in the business of sending reporters on wild-goose chases.  There had been leaks that the Watergate break-in was the work of anti-Castro Cubans out to prove that the Democrats were receiving contributions from Cuba.*


     The Watergate story had stalled, maybe even died.  The reporters could not understand why.  Bernstein's administration contact, the former official, was also unable to get any useful information and joked -- or so Bernstein thought -- that the White House had "gone underground."

     Bernstein, protesting, was shipped back to Virginia politics.  Woodward decided to take a vacation.

____________________________

All the President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.  1974.  Simon & Schuster.

______________________________________

I got this graveyard woman, you know she keeps my kid
But my soulful mama, you know she keeps me hid
She's a junkyard angel and she always gives me bread
Well, if I go down dyin' you know -- she's bound to put a blanket on my bed.


Well, when the pipeline gets broken and I'm lost on the river bridge
I'm cracked up on the highway and on the water's edge
She comes down the thruway ready to sew me up with thread
Well, if I go down dyin' you know she's -- bound, to put a blanket on my bed.


Well, she don't make me nervous, she don't talk too much
She walks like Bo Diddley and she don't need no crutch
She keeps this four-ten -- all -- loaded with lead
Well, if I go down dyin' you know -- she's -- bound, to put a blanket on my bed.


Well, you know I need a steam shovel mama to keep away the dead
I need a dump truck baby to -- unload my head
She brings me everything and more, and just like I said
Well -- if I go down dyin' you know -- she, bound to put a blanket on my bed.

_____________________________

Lyrics / "From a Buick 6"
-- the fourth song on Highway 61 Revisited album / Bob Dylan

-------------------------------------------

-30-

politicians in my eyes

[excerpt, Bernstein - Woodward]

------------- Bernstein returned to his desk feigning unconcern but in a foul mood. ...He decided to make a last attempt to stay on the Watergate story.  He wrote a five-page memo outlining what he called the "Chotiner Theory" and sent copies to Sussman, Woodward and Harry M. Rosenfeld, the Post's metropolitan editor.

     "It is a long shot, to be sure," the memo began, "but . . . Colson is Chotiner's successor at the White House. . . . Colson might well be tied up in some aspects of 'ballot security' with Chotiner.  That could mean evaluating whatever information Chotiner is coming up with."

     The next day, Rosenfeld told Bernstein to pursue the Chotiner Theory and see what else he could learn.

      At a press conference that same afternoon, June 22, President Nixon made his first public comment on the break-in.  "The White House has had no involvement whatever in this particular incident," he said.

     Bernstein and Woodward lingered over the phrase "this particular incident."  There were already too many coincidences which couldn't be dismissed so offhandedly:  An attorney in Washington had said he could positively identify Frank Sturgis as one of the several men who had attacked Pentagon Papers defendant Daniel Ellsberg 

outside a memorial service for the late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in May.  One suspect's address book contained a rough sketch of hotel rooms that were to be used as headquarters by Senator McGovern

at the Democratic convention.  An architect in Miami had said that Bernard Barker had tried to get the blueprints of the convention hall and its air-conditioning system.  Hunt's boss at the Mullen firm, Robert Bennett, had been the organizer of about 100 dummy campaign committees used to funnel millions of dollars in secret contributions to the President's reelection campaign.  

McCord had been carrying an application for college press credentials for the Democratic convention when he was arrested.  

He had recently traveled to Miami Beach.  

Some of the accused burglars from Miami had been in Washington three weeks before their arrest, when the offices of some prominent Democratic lawyers in the Watergate office building were burglarized.



     Within an hour of the President's statement, reporters were told by Devan L. Shumway, the public relations director of CRP, that John Mitchell had ordered an in-house investigation of the break-in at Democratic headquarters.

     On July 1, nine days after the President's statement, Mitchell resigned as manager of the Nixon campaign, explaining that his wife had insisted he quit.

E. Howard Hunt


     Woodward asked several members of the Post's national staff, which was handling the story, if they believed the resignation was unconnected to Watergate.  They did.

     The next day, metropolitan editor Harry Rosenfeld frowned and told Woodward:  "A man like John Mitchell doesn't give up all that power for his wife."

~   ~   ~

_____________________________

All the President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodard.  1974.  Simon & Schuster.

_______________________________

Well, I ride on a mailtrain, baby

Can't buy a thrill

Well, I've been up all night, baby

Leanin' on the windowsill

Well, if I die

On top of the hill --

And if I don't make it,

You know my baby will

Don't the moon look good, mama

Shinin' through the trees?

Don't the brakeman look good, mama

Flaggin' down the "Double E?"

Don't the sun look good

Goin' down over the sea? -- --

Don't my gal look fine

When she's -- comin' after me?

Now the wintertime is coming

The windows are filled with frost

I went to tell everybody

But I could not -- get across

Well, I wanna be your lover, baby

I don't wanna be your boss -- --

Don't say I never warned you 

When your train gets lost

________________________________

Lyrics / "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry"

-- the third song on Highway 61 Revisited album / Bob Dylan

___________________________

-30-

Woodstein

------------- [excerpt, All the President's Men] ---------

     Until the August 1 story about the Dahlberg check, the working relationship between Bernstein and Woodward was more competitive than anything else.  Each had worried that the other might walk off with the remainder of the story by himself.  If one had gone chasing after a lead at night or on a weekend, the other felt compelled to do the same.  

The August 1 story had carried their joint byline; the day afterward, Woodward asked Sussman if Bernstein's name could appear with his on the follow-up story -- though Bernstein was still in Miami and had not worked on it.  From then on, any Watergate story would carry both names.  Their colleagues melded the two into one and gleefully named their byline Woodstein.

     Gradually, Bernstein's and Woodward's mutual distrust and suspicions diminished.  They realized the advantages of working together, particularly because their temperaments were so dissimilar.  The breadth of the story, the inherent risks and the need for caution all argued for at least two reporters working on it.  By dividing the work and pooling their information, they increased their contacts.

     Each kept a separate master list of telephone numbers.  The numbers were called at least twice a week.  (Just the fact that a certain source wouldn't come to the phone or return calls often signaled something important.)...

_______________________

All the President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.  1974.  Simon & Schuster.

______________________________

The sweet pretty things are in bed now of course

The city fathers, they're trying to endorse

The reincarnation of Paul Revere's horse
But the town has no need to be nervous


The ghost of Belle Starr, she hands down her wits
To Jezebel the nun she violently knits
A bald wig for Jack the Ripper who sits
At the head of the Chamber of Commerce


Mama's in the fact'ry
She ain't got no shoes
Daddy's in the alley
He's lookin' for the fuse

I'm in the kitchen 
With the tombstone blues...

__________________________

Lyrics from "Tombstone Blues"
second cut on the album
Highway 61 Revisited 
by Bob Dylan

-30-

jugglers, clowns, and former officials

[excerpt, Woodward and Bernstein, All The President's Men]
     Bernstein asked if he thought there was any possibility that the President's campaign committee or -- less likely -- the White House would sponsor such a stupid mission as the Watergate raid.

Bernstein waited to be told no.  

"I know the President well enough to know if he needed something like this done it certainly wouldn't be a shoddy job," said the former official.  But it was not inconceivable that the President would want his campaign aides to have every piece of political intelligence and gossip available.  

He recalled that one White House political consultant "was always talking about walkie-talkies.  You would talk about politics and he would talk about devices.  There was always a great preoccupation at the White House with all this intelligence nonsense.  Some of those people are dumb enough to think there would be something there."  


This picture of the White House was in sharp contrast to the smooth, well-oiled machine Bernstein was accustomed to reading about in the newspapers -- those careful, disciplined, look-alike guards to the palace who were invariably referred to as "the President's Men."  

Ehrlichman, Haldeman

John Dean


     Bernstein asked about one of them, Robert Odle, presently director of personnel at CRP and a former White House aide.  The committee had identified Odle as the man who had hired McCord as its security coordinator. "That's bullshit," the former official replied.  "Mitchell wouldn't let go of a decision like that.

Mitchell would decide, with advice from somebody who knew something about security."  The hiring of McCord would almost certainly have involved at least one other person, he said -- a Mitchell aide whom he described as the former Attorney General's right-hand man, Fred LaRue.  

Bernstein jotted down the name (spelling it La Roue) as he was told more about him.  "I would expect that if any wiretaps were active up to the time of the break-in, LaRue would have known about them."  The former official offered an additional thought.  Murray Chotiner, 

the President's old friend and specialist in low-road campaign tactics since the days of Nixon's congressional campaigns against Jerry Voorhis and Helen Gahagan Douglas was in charge of something called "ballot security."  Although officially undefined, the job's purpose was to prevent the Democrats from stealing the election, as the President and his loyalists (as well as some Democrats) maintained had happened in 1960.  

Later that afternoon, David Broder, the Post's national political reporter and columnist, gave Bernstein the name of an official of the Republican National Committee and suggested that he be contacted.  

Broder described the official as a "very straight guy" who might know something because he was among those engaged in planning security arrangements for the GOP convention.  CRP had said that McCord had worked as a consultant on convention security.  "The truth is that McCord 

has never done security work of any kind for the convention," the party official told Bernstein.  "What he has been doing, I assume, is taking care of security for the Committee to Re-elect.  All they care about at CRP is Richard M. Nixon.  They couldn't care less about the Republican Party.  Given the chance, they would wreck it."

_____________________________

All the President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.  1974.  Simon & Schuster.

_______________________________

Ah -- you never turned around to see the frowns
On the jugglers and the clowns when they all did -- tricks for you

You never understood that it ain't no good
You shouldn't let other people get your -- kicks for you

You used to ride on a chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder, a Siamese cat

Ain't it hard when you discover that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you -- everything -- he could steal


How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone...

_________________________

Lyrics from "Like A Rolling Stone"
first cut on the album Highway 61 Revisited by Bob Dylan

-30-