I am not a mama's boy
i got my ideals from my dad

He nurtured in me the spirit of a gambling man
he read to me IF by Rudyard Kipling

Now my life is caught in a groove
where i will be till my dying day
if i dont get out now

I have got all the comforts a retired man cud want
a decent home
loving kids

but i dont wanna play grandpa
to my kid's kids

its California or bust






"California or bust" is the archetypical phrase, model for so many imitations. The Great Plains of the U.S. were struck, in the 1930's, with two catastrophes: drought and the Great Depression. So many dirt farmers were left with no dirt, just dust and debt, in the wind storms destroying their farms, that some of them headed west on Route 66 towards what they hoped would be greener pastures in California, the "Golden State". Some of them had signs "California or bust" on their shabby jalopies and trucks, loaded with their families and few possessions, as sometimes shown in newsreels. When they got there many were known as Okies, having started in Oklahoma. See Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939) for more about the Okies and their trek. Not all of the Okies were lifted up once they reached California, and there are still pockets of people referred to as Okies by other Californians.

As for "bust," I suppose they meant they were going to bust their guts trying, and failure would be complete. At any rate, it was a popular slogan of the time, no longer in vogue. You could say, for instance, "No. 1 or bust." A similar phrase was "... or nothing," as in "complete success or nothing."