Accident on 3rd Street Songtext

von Al Stewart

Linda was killed last Saturday 'bout fifteen blocks from where she lives
In a car crash, people gathered around the gravesite, friends and relatives,
Dressed in black.
Preacher mumblin' how she's bound to go to Heaven,
The service started at half-past ten, it was all over by eleven.
They said:
God's to give, and God's to take away,
But why He happened to pick Linda on a Saturday night, no one could say.
Maybe it's just one of those things,
One of those things.

They found guy who did it, he had the lobotomy and the chicken eyes,
And he gazed around the courtroom with a kind of vague suprise.
Reminded me of one of those Vikings with the long-handled swords,
The kind of guy even Joan Baez would not feel non-violent towards.
Said he wasn't looking, maybe he had had a bit too much,
It was dark, it was raining, he didn't see the light of the sun and such.
It was just one of those things,
One of those things.

I asked an old uncle of the girl the situation and he gave me this reply,
While pointing a bony finger up into the general direction of the sky:
"Get on with your own life, it is not ours to reason why,"
Said he used to worry about it once when he was young,
Now he doesn't even bother to try.
He left me with a feeling that what he said was basically sound,
Like a black hole in space, or velocity, useless but profound.
Just one of those things,
One of those things.

Tonight I'm gonna take myself down to my local cafe,
Gonna get smashed out of my mind, gonna waste myself away.
Gonna drink and drink and sink into that dark abyss,
I wanna be just like that Viking, I wanna know if ignorance is truly bliss.
Linda's in the cold ground, won't see her anymore.
Somewhere out on the highway tonight, the drunken engines roar.
It's just one of those things,
One of those things.

Oh, just one of those things.