When you put me on the Wolverine up to Annandale

Tried to warn ya

It was still September
When your daddy was quite surprised
To find you with the working girls in the county jail

I was smoking with the boys upstairs
when I heard about the whole affair,
I said oh no, William and Mary won't do

Well, I did not think the girl
Could be so cruel
And I'm never going back
To my old school

It's a song about Bard College, Annandale on the Hudson, NY state.
Daddy G, the infamous G. Gordon Liddy.

Fagan's high school girlfriend, Dorothy White, gives Fagan (ahem, half of "69") or "35 sweet goodbyes" before she sends him off on a train called the "Wolverine" to Annandale-on-the-Hudson, NY where Fagan would attend Bard College, sometimes referred to as "The William & Mary of the North". Bard's dean of students, (the girl who "could be so cruel") worked with the district attorney, G Gordon Liddy (Daddy G) and the local police to snitch and to drug-bust Fagan's dorm and arrest about 50 kids. The bust happens on a weekend that Dorothy is visiting and so Dorothy also gets arrested, as does Fagan who is "smoking with the boys upstairs" at 5AM.

Bard bails out the students, but not Dorothy since she's not a student, so her daddy has to bail her of jail (full of "working girls"). Fagan offers to take his increasingly bohemian girlfriend, Dorothy, to Guadalajara to avoid prosecution but she doesn't want to go.

Fagan was angry at Bard for its complicity in the bust and so he didn't attend graduation (when the whistle blows) and Fagan swears that he'd never going back to his old schoool. He also thinks that Bard doesn't deserve to be called "The William & Mary of the North". (So "William & Mary won't do".) Oleanders can't grow in New York's climate and apparently refer to cannabis (perhaps growing under UV lights).

Fagan did go back to Bard 16 years later, in 1985, to accept an honory doctorat

California tumbles into the sea
That'll be the day I go back to Annandale

One of my favorite bands. Good song.

quote:

"35 sweet goodbyes"

Who was counting?