Scottdale Cotton Mill: Echoes in the Brick

Lyrics

They call you The Lofts now.Scottdale Mill Lofts.I stand in the parking lot where the company store used to be.And I'm just listening.Listening to the quiet.George T. Scott, he saw this piece of ground in nineteen hundred.Heard a fortune in the sound of a thousand spindles turning.So they laid your bones of red brick, window after window.W.B. Smith Whaley drew the plans.A cathedral for making cotton duck.Heavy canvas for tents, for sails, for war.Your first breath was the steam in the boiler.And now, there's a stainless steel kitchen where the weaving room roared.A quiet hum from a refrigerator.But do you still feel it? The vibration?The ghost of the loom, the echo in the brick.The memory of the lint in the air, thick as Georgia summer.They scrubbed the floors, but the history sticks.The whistle screamed at dawn.Pulled them out of the little mill houses.One line for white faces, another for Black.Hands, young and old, feeding the machines.The noise so loud you had to shout to be heard.And you were paid in scrip for the store that he owned.You held them all. You saw it all.And now, there's a leather couch where a spinning frame stood.A soft-close cabinet door.But do you still feel it? The vibration?The ghost of the loom, the echo in the brick.The memory of the lint in the air, thick as Georgia summer.They scrubbed the floors, but the history sticks.Then one day, the whistle went silent. For good.The machines were sold for scrap.And you just stood here, empty.Windows broken.Just a big brick shell holding the silence.Until the new sounds came.The whine of a saw, the crack of a hammer.Not making, but unmaking.Remaking.They call it 'adaptive reuse'.Exposed brick is a feature now.People pay for these high ceilings, these big windows.They don't know the sweat that seasoned this wood.Do you ever dream of the noise?Do you still hear the whistle, old friend?In the quiet of 3 a.m.?I think you do.I think you do.