Unknown - For Just One Dime Lyrics

For Just One Dime
(lyrics +1984 Mark Cohen)

Ah, for just one dime, I could call my friend Ted Savage
Who lives right down on Franklin by the wide Pacific sea
We'd have one fine time, but my plans have all been ravaged
A two-bit call is just too rich for me

Northward 'cross the Golden Gate old Ted and I would go
To hang out with the laid-back folks up in Sausalito
Drinking wine and Perrier, hot-tubbing all the day
We'd race our roaring Datsun to the Bay (chorus)

But how am I to make my call, and ask my friend to roam?
Divestiture has driven up the cost of phoning home
Now like that little alien I'm sitting all alone
By a long-forgotten, lonely, silent phone (chorus)

But how am I so different from my friends across this land?
In Portland and Chicago, too, it's gotten out of hand
We'll have meters on our pay phones soon, the charges clicking past
The next rate hike is coming, and it sure won't be the last (chorus)

I'm running out of quarters, and we're running out of time
From San Francisco to New York, let's fight to keep the dime
We'll crack the corporate ramparts, we'll say we're mad as hell
At that money-grubbing monster that we used to call Ma Bell (chorus)