Johnny Mathis — Yellow Roses On Her Gown

I was born in San Fransisco when the bay was full of cruisers Where the west wind smells of fishing boats for fifty miles around My father wore a crew cut, he was lean and he was handsome And my mother wore a sash of yellow roses on her gown They would walk me down from Green Street Pass cathedrals on the hill sides And the carillons could fill the hearts of any one in town I remember how they looked then, when their eyes were always living When my father loved a girl with yellow roses on her gown Then we moved to Placid County where the weather was a joker And I watched my parents laughter turn from amber into ice But my father never stumbled, he would tell me things would change soon He would bear and bear the insults of a pair of loaded dice And my mother stood beside him though her heart was on the hill side Of a city where a soldier and his lover better die And at night amid the whisper of the pines and manzanitas She would cry into the sash of yellow roses on her gown Now my father's living eastward by the Sacramento river And he swears to me he's happy with his practice and some land In the springtime and the summer when the fog is off the valley I visit him on weekends, his grass is overgrown Sometimes after dinner, I will gaze away the evening In the attic at a sash of yellow roses on her gown