Blog 3553 – 07. 27.2025
Putting All The Pieces Together
In Jim Croce’s hit song You Don’t Mess Around With Jim, Big Jim Walker, the purported King of forty second street, is confronted by a man named Willie McCoy, from Alabama where his friends call him Slim. It seems that while vacationing down south, Big Jim hustled ole Willie a.k.a Slim and took all his money. Slim shows up out of the blue and on Jim’s home turf announces that he has come to get his money back.
The chorus of the song starts out warning that it is not wise to, “Tug on Superman’s cape, spit into the wind. You don’t pull the mask off the ole Long Ranger and you don’t mess around with Jim.” Big Jim who drives a drop top Cadillac reminds me of another bad guy that Jim’s Croce sing about in another of his hit songs, Bad Bad Leroy Brown. Leroy is described as the baddest man in the whole damned town and drives a custom Continental, an El Dorado too, and is always ready for a fight with a thirty-two gun in his pocket for fun and a razor in his shoe.
In both songs there is a confrontation between two big men. The result of the Bad Bad Leroy Brown song is that when they pull the fighters from the floor that Leroy looked like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces gone. And in the end of Don’t Mess Around With Jim they sung a different kind of story when they pulled him from the floor, cut in ‘bout a hundred places, shot in a couple more.
“You don’t pull on Superman’s cape
You don’t spit into the wind,
You don’t pull the mask off the ole Lone Ranger
And you don’t mess around with Slim.”
Above are pictures of two jigsaw puzzles that my wife recently put together. The second one was missing a piece, always a bit disappointing outcome, just ask ole Leroy Brown or Big Jim Walker.
I conclude with two lessons from the two songs mentioned:
“Be careful hustling people strange to you.”
and
“Leroy learned a lesson ‘bout messing’ with the wife of a jealous man.”
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David James White
Jim Croce – You Don’t Mess Around With Jim “Lyrics”
Jim Croce – You Don’t Mess Around With Jim “Lyrics”
Bad Bad Leroy Brown Lyrics
theencouragingword 