"Kentucky Avenue" is a song written and performed by Tom Waits, and released on Side Two of his 1978 album, Blue Valentine.
I used to get up at 1 o' clock in the morning so I could deliver my papers and still have time to break the law ...[2][3]Many of the song's lyrics relate to real people in Waits' childhood.
[2][4] Perhaps the strongest autobiographical influence was Waits' childhood friend, a boy named Kipper, who suffered from polio and used a wheelchair.
I rode a train once to Santa Barbara with this kid and it almost seemed like he lived a life somewhere before he was born and he brought what he knew with him into this world and so ... it's what you don't know that's usually more interesting.
This refers to one of Waits' earliest childhood memories, in which he would imagine that, every night, a freight train would run through the centre of his house.