Forty-Eight Twenty-Three Twenty-Second St. Songtext

von The Fiery Furnaces

Now, as for my aunt
Who told on me

She was always wearing her turbans

Sailing back to Greece on the Normandy
Having dinner at the captain's table
Sitting on the deck with 5 men surrounding her
With uncle Sam in the back row
Back at home, riding up the Taygetus on a donkey named David
With her soft leather boots dangling off to the side
So full of pride
So full of pride.

Profitis Elias, so high you can see us
4823 22nd St., standing there with cashmere overcoats
And those turbans with their Arabian silver
And ostrich and papagou feather hats
And not far down from our koumbaros Betinis

We've got a secret between us Betinis

In the back of the Hawthorne smoke shop
In the basement of the hat factory
The fedoras got glued together

But in that back basement...
In that back basement, a lot of things got sewn up!

A full compliment of grinchy Italians
Counting up on their stubby fingers, and smoking, I'm told
The least sophisticated cigars
The local lottery and so forth
Like anybody was going to get a nit out of that nut
Though what a lucky loser is our five thousand dollars a day friend and koumbaros Betinis
We've got a secret between us, Betinis

In the back of the Hawthorne smoke shop,
Haberdashery was the least of it
In the basement of the hat factory
The fedoras got glued together

But in that back basement...
In that back basement, a lot of things got sewn up

We've got a secret between us, Betinis.
Five thousand dollars a day
Five thousand dollars a day
Five thousand dollars a day
Five thousand dollars a day

In the basement of the hat factory
The fedoras got glued together

But in that back basement
In that back basement, a lot of things got sewn up!
We've got a secret between us, Betinis

Not that nobody knows, like nobody knows about the white doves that flew out the cake at the brother's wedding
In your hat factory, Betinis, they count up all the buffalo nickels
And silver certificates wrung from Lake Superior spirits
And prize fight foolery, and sluts speaking easy in the closets on 12th St.
And in exchange you put in your pants $5, 000 a day to stick under your bed for starters
But later in the laundry, so you can feel free to chase your wife around the table
When you feel she looked at the apricot and boysenberry boy twice