From The Pen Of Frank Jackman- Malvina Reynolds’ “On The Rim Of The World”

On the Rim of the World

Notes: words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1973 Schroder Music Company, renewed 2001.


She inches along on the rim of the world,
Always about to go over,
How she can manage I never will know,
To get from one day to the other.
Scrounging a buck or a bed
Or the share of a roof for her head,
This nobody's child, this precarious girl,
Who lives on the rim of the world.

She looks like a princess in somebody's rags,
She dreams of a world without danger,
Climbing the stairs to a room of her own
With someone who isn't a stranger.
But now she eats what she can,
And accepts what there is for a man,
This nobody's child, this precarious girl,
Who lives on the rim of the world.

She inches along on the rim of the world,
Always about to go over,
How she can manage I never will know,
To get from one day to the other.
Scrounging a buck or a bed
Or the share of a roof for her head,
This nobody's child, this precarious girl,
Who lives on the rim of the world.


Malvina Reynolds songbook(s) in which the music to this song appears:---- The Malvina Reynolds Songbook

Malvina Reynolds recording(s) on which this song is performed:
---- Held Over---- Ear to the Ground

Recordings by other artists on which this song is performed:
---- Rosalie Sorrels: Be Careful There's a Baby in the House (Green Linnet Records GLCD 2100, 1991)
---- Rosalie Sorrels: No Closing Chord; The Songs of Malvina Reynolds (Red House Records RHR CD 143, 2000)
---- Jane Voss and Hoyle Osborne: Pullin' Through (Green Linnet SIF 1044, 1983)

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… she, Clara this week, maybe Clarissa or Claire next week, or after the next bust, thought for a moment, for just a moment, no more, she had no time for much more, what with her name, her birth name, Clementine, Clementine Barrows, placeof birth Northbridge, Kentucky down in the hills and hollows of Appalachia, some nineteen years ago, coming up next on the court docket. What was it for this time, solicitation, no, lewd and lascivious behavior, whatever that was. She just tried to please the guy, when she, like always with the guys, approached him looking for a drink, or drinks, and asked him what he was looking for, and if it was her, give him what he asked for, or maybe what he needed, what he wanted in the back of the Red Top Grille. How did she know he would have buyer’s remorse, or whatever he told the cops, to get out from under his own rap and walk, respectable john walk, when somebody complained and yelled copper after they had finished. She thought though, that minute thought, that she was due for a break, a break from having to pay attention to any man who would give her a look, from any guy who thought he could go around the world on the basis of a few cheap scotches (not even good stuff, Haig &Haig maybe, stuff that a lady should expect of agentleman and that she had developed a taste for), some fast talk and some fast hands.

She could hardly believe that it was only a couple of years before that she had headed west, headed for Los Angeles. Headed out to be a Hollywood star (everybody back home had said that she had the looks to make it, back in Northbridge and around the hills and hollows after she won that Miss Eastern Kentucky beauty contest, the Jessica Lange looks , Jessica Lange who just then was making a big splash with a monkey, uh, oh a gorilla, who was all goggle eyes over her in the re-make of King Kong ) or at least a starlet, on that Trailways she picked up in Prestonsburg after that incident with her father, his drunken midnight creep up the stairs one night which she could not understand , and then that big blow-up with Lem, Lemuel Bass, when he asked her to marry him. Christ she was only seventeen, only finishing high school, only starting out with her dreams. She would probably have had two kids and one in the oven by now if she had stayed.

Yah, she had no regrets about leaving that scene as hard as things had been once she got out here and found that fistfuls, bushels full, hell, acres full of other young girls from Steubenville, from Decatur, from Moline, from Fargo (all the Dakota cities it seemed like) were looking to be stars, or at least starlets. Once she learned the ropes, knew the score, she got that job as a drive-in waitress, a car hop, until that night manager (really just a trainee night manager) thought that putting her on the side of the drive-in where all the valley guys sat their cars down on Friday and Saturday night to feast of burgers and fries delivered by a short shirt and halter tip-worthy young waitress meant that he could roam his hands all over her, Then, after he fired her, that foolish job (as she country girl, country high Baptist girl brought-up before her mother died, still blushed an innocent blush thinking about it) so-called, modeling, well not really modeling but showing herself naked, in the buff, for guys to look over at private parties. She just couldn’t do it after that first time, couldn’t have a bunch of strangers, strange men, eyeing her and thinking whorish thoughts. Then nothing, no jobs, no money, finally no room, and tough times even keeping herself fed, nothing for a month or so. The streets.

Desperate, forget blushes (except private look back country girl properly Christian brought up blushes), forget man stares, forget everything except trying to get off the streets after she had nearly been molested, raped, one night when she slept out on the edges of Venice Beach and a couple of guys had held her down before some guy called them off and they ran. Then a few days later she met Trudy on the Santa Monica beach as she was trying to get a little sun to make her look less like some midnight troll, Trixie from Norman, Oklahoma who had taken her own Trailways ride west a couple of years before her and knew the score, and knew that she couldn’t go back to Norman. Trudy was, well she called herself a bar maid but what she was a prostitute working the better bars in Santa Monica, the ones near the pier.

And so she, Clementine Barrows born, now Clara, learned the ropes, learned how to take a man’s money without public blushes. Learned how make a man pay for his around the world pleasures. It had been tough, like now with this soft bust soon to be taken care of by Artie and then back to work, and some of these guys were a little wacky, wacky in their sexual dreams, their quirky wants that she could write a book about, but she had gotten herself a room before long, a room of her own, a nice room she was fixing up, got off those damn streets, and got used to what men had to give, which wasn’t much.

…yah, as her name was called to go before the judge she thought she needed a break, needed it bad.