I read that this song was recorded the same week it was written, which is pretty cool if it's true.  It comes from the album 'Fast Folk - A Community Of Singers And Songwriters' on the Smithsonian Folkways label.

This ran in the September 1994 issue of Sing Out!:  Gorka discussed his first song about a character or experience outside himself. He has never recorded this song (I think they meant for one of his albums), about Geza, another Bethlehem character, at the request of Geza's mother. A fifty-ish errand boy also known as Junior, or "whoop whoop whee," for his garrulous ramblings and mouth sounds, Geza ricochets around the south side of Bethlehem doing tasks for local merchants, who watch over him at the same time.

Said Gorka, "Geza is a song about how people like that are at least as important to the quality of life as the doctors and lawyers--the mainstream people -- made for today's world. People on the south side look out for Geza. It's a nice situation. A human situation."

Gorka calls Geza a "breakthrough" song and equates it with Branching Out, which won the New Folk Award in 1984 in Kerrville Texas, and gave Gorka confidence that he could be a professional songwriter.

Take a listen to Geza's Wailing Ways

Geza's Wailing Ways

He's a local yoyo who roams this part of town.
Runnin' numbers for the old folks, he's had his ups and downs.
Freakin' by in his two-tones, a little too much ozone.
He's a cartoon boy in an aging, dreamless world.

He breaks into a solo that cuts through the traffic's din.
And everyone who knows him knows its Geza checkin' in.
Strangers turn in wonder, start to laugh but hold it under.
As they get a load of Geza's wailing ways.

[Chorus]
I shouldn't laugh but I do, I do
The sounds are for himself and not for you
If you were to listen well I don't think he'd mind
As he clicks, whoops, and hollers away the time.

Geza lives at home now, though his hair has gone away
Evenings sweeps the newsstand near the business of the day
Hollers only when he's walking when he stops he starts talking
To those who know of Geza's wailing ways.

[Repeat Chorus and First Verse]

© 1983 by John Gorka