The Bob Zentz Songbook: Veterans' Auction Hall

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The Bob Zentz Songbook

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Veterans’ Auction Hall

From Mirrors And Changes

(in C – capo 5)

1. Smoke-filled room, hundred-watt gloom (G-D-C-G)

Spreading from nicotine walls (C-G-D)

Faces so bent, but too tired to resent (Em-D-C-G)

The Veterans’ Auction Hall (C-D-G)

But they’re selling off pieces of somebody’s life (C-Bm)

Slightly used for a dollar or more (C-G)

Once they meant something, but nothing was gained (C-G-Em)

And that’s what they’re selling ‘em for (Am-D-G)

Watches and radios, meaningless things

But it’s something to do on a day in December

Battered old guitar, and fake diamond rings

With stories too told to remember (chorus)

Makes you think of the men without any names

Who died leaving nothing behind

But an old watch and chain, or a ring made in Spain

To explain what became of their time (chorus)

Well, I came to buy that beat-up guitar

Let’s say it belonged to a friend

Ramblin’ Conrad died here last May

And it’s all he had left in the end

Now they’re selling his guitar, “Who’ll give me three?”

“I will,” and I held up my hand

Sold for three dollars, don’t seem fair to me

Can you call that the price of a man?

So I walked away with a tear in my smile

And if life’s just a tune that goes on

Then he knows that I play it every once in a while

And he knows that I wrote him this song

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