The Grateful Dead’s Wharf Rat

Why does this, of a hundred unforgettable songs from the pen of Jerry Garcia, so resonate with me? It’s not that I identify with a down and out August West who, like the grey-beard loon who gate-crashed a wedding to buttonhole Coleridge and offload a tragic rime, stops a man to ask for a dime; a dime for a cup of coffee.

I’ve never walked in shoes so down at heel as August West’s, nor made my bed in the docks of the city. And alcohol’s one drug I always could take or leave.

But isn’t there something magnificently and redemptively – albeit ridiculously – human in this loser’s thirst for salvation in the love of a Good Woman? In its expression in August’s touching but surely misplaced faith that a lost sweetheart he loves “more than my wine”  has been “true” to him?

And isn’t that humanity reflected right back by a singer who himself has no dime but trades in a rarer currency; its mintage the willingness to hear one more hard luck story on the street? And in the equally ridiculous yet piercingly human assurance that August’s Pearly Baker – a woman the man with time but no dime never set eyes on, if indeed she even exists outside the straw-clutched imaginings of two drowning men – has indeed been “true” to him?

Yup, I guess that’s why I return over and over to this song. That – and the way the soaringly unexpected chord changes by the greatest of the West Coast rock bands drive home the gospel of our common humanity.

Old man down, way down down, down by the docks of the city
Blind and dirty, asked me for a dime, a dime for a cup of coffee
I got no dime but I got some time to hear his story
My name is August West, and I love my Pearly Baker best, more than my wine
More than my wine, more than my maker, though he’s no friend of mine
Everyone said, I’d come to no good, I knew I would pearly, believe them
Half of my life, I spent doing time for some other fucker’s crime
The other half found me stumbling ’round drunk on burgundy wine
But I’ll get back on my feet again someday
The good lord willing, if he says I may
I know that the life I’m living’s no good
I’ll get a new start, live the life I should
I’ll get up and fly away, I’ll get up and fly away, fly away
Pearly’s been true, true to me, true to my dying day he said
I said to him, I said to him, “I’m sure she’s been.”
I said to him, “I’m sure she’s been true to you.”
Got up and wandered, wandered downtown, nowhere to go but just hang around
I’ve got a girl, named Bonnie Lee, I know that girl’s been true to me
I know she’s been, I’m sure she’s been true to me.

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