In Lure of the Tropics

Ah one, two, three

Son, you've come to the tropics, heard all you had to do
Was sit in the shade of a cocoanut glade
While the dollars roll into you?

I started off to be honest, with everything on the square,
But a man can't fool with the Golden Rule
In a crowd that won't play fair.

I pulled a deal in Guayaquil, in an Inca silver mine,
But before they found 'twas salted ground I was safe in Argentine

But the thing that'll double-bar my soul
When it flaps at heaven's doors
Was peddling booze to the Santa Cruz, and Winchester forty-fours.

I was then in charge of a smugglers barge on the coast of Yucatan,
But she sank to hell off Cozumel one night in a hurricán.

I got to shore on a broken oar, in the filthy, shrieking dark,
With the other two of the good ship's crew converted into shark.
From a limestone cliff I flagged a skiff
With a salt-soaked pair of jeans,
And I worked my way (for I couldn't pay) on a fruiter to New Orleans.

It's kind of a habit, the tropics, it gets you worse than rum;
You'll get away and you swear you'll stay,
But it calls, and back you come.