Oakhurst: The Streetcar's Embrace

Lyrics

[Intro]
A sound on the air.
Nineteen-ten.
A hum in the wire strung over the clay.
You were the pulse then.
The only way.

[Verse 1]
The houses turned their faces to you.
Shaved their lots a little closer to the curb.
Porches built just to watch you pass.
To time the coffee by your morning clang.
Steel veins laid in the dirt,
a promise running from the Village stop
all the way downtown.
We walked to meet you.
We carried groceries home along your path.
You drew the map of our days.

[Chorus]
And the city felt your pull.
Your electric breath, your steady glide.
They called it annexation.
A line on a page, a vote in a quiet room.
But it was your embrace, all along.
Two steel arms, pulling Oakhurst inside.
The streetcar's embrace.
Making us one.

[Verse 2]
The papers said Decatur now.
The tax man knew a different name.
But nothing really changed on College Avenue.
The seven-thirty still smelled of brake dust and damp wool.
The spark still jumped from the wire in the rain.
The ordinance just gave a name
to a connection you had already made.
A current you had already run
between our little world and the courthouse square.

[Chorus]
And the city felt your pull.
Your electric breath, your steady glide.
They called it annexation.
A line on a page, a vote in a quiet room.
But it was your embrace, all along.
Two steel arms, pulling Oakhurst inside.
The streetcar's embrace.
Making us one.

[Bridge]
Now you're just a ghost in the asphalt.
A gentle curve in the road where the tracks used to run.
But we still walk the lines you drew.
The porches still face the street.
And when the music spills out from Harmony Park,
when the whole neighborhood becomes a stage,
it's your design we're living in.
The shape you left behind.
The closeness you demanded.

[Outro]
Nineteen-ten.
A signature on a deed.
But you did the real work.
You held us.
You connected us.
Your quiet hum,
in the wires,
forever.