We had the express pleasure of checking out the way, way offbeat Mamas and the Papas-esque folk trio My Dad’s Truck at a music fest recently, and enjoyed this little ditty about a poor sap who gets jammed up for hopping a subway turnstile. It’s written by Connecticut songwriter Leif R. Smith.

Marc Wontorec of the MTA

You all know the story of that boy from Boston,

Charley of the MTA.

Well, here’s another song about a subway rider that happened in New York they say. 

Marc Wontorec went out to Aqueduct to bet on the Stymie Handicap.

He didn’t own a car, didn’t hire a taxi, he just hung on to that subway strap. 

By his side hung his pretty little girlfriend, her name escapes me just now.

She didn’t like ponies and didn’t like racing but went along anyhow. 

They wagered twenty dollars at the racetrack and lost it, and went to split the scene.

Got to Aqueduct Station and came to the realization there weren’t no Metrocard machine. 

Worse than that the ticket window was closed so, with no way to pay his fare,

Marc squoze through the turnstile with his pretty little girl friend and ran into two transit cops there. 

Those cops didn’t arrest him or beat him senseless; they didn’t even haul him in.

They just gave him a ticket for sixty dollars and that’s where the trouble did begin. 

Marc Wontorec is why I’m singing, if his name you can’t recall.

As fate would have it ol’ Marc was a lawyer so he beat it down to Whitehall. 

Where he argued his fine because the transit bureau says in their brochures

Every single station has a Metrocard machine, of this you can be assured. 

It says the same thing on the Metrocard website and technically it is true.

‘cause down a long, dark hallway from Aqueduct Station there’s a machine at Conduit Avenue. 

Was Marc lazy or just unknowing?

We may never read in the Times.

So I can’t help but asking, to finish this song out, are either of these such a big crime. 

 Marc Wontorec, Marc Wontorec, straphangers raise their weary arms to you. There weren’t no Metrocard machine at Aqueduct Station, just one down Conduit Avenue.

 

“Marc Wontorec of the MTA” can be heard here.