“Walked up Ellum an’ I come down Main,
Tryin’ to bum a nickel jes’ to buy cocaine.
Ho, Ho, baby, take a whiff on me”
—- Leadbelly, Take a Whiff on Me

“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgandy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)

“A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

When you go down on Deep Ellum,
Put your money in your socks
‘Cause them Women on Deep Ellum
Sho’ will throw you on the rocks.
—-Leadbelly, Deep Ellum Blues