Decatur: Always Becoming

Lyrics

[Intro]
I walk your streets tonight, Decatur.
There’s a new coat of paint on the old brick.
There’s the sound of a saw somewhere, and then quiet.
The hum of a city that never holds still.

[Verse 1]
The first lines were drawn on Creek land, a seat for a county.
A name for a Commodore who never saw this red clay.
Then came the whistle in 1905.
A steel spine laid down, changing your bones.
The streetcar rattled out to Oakhurst, pulling it close in 1910.
A new limb, a new vein.

[Chorus]
Oh, Decatur, you are always becoming.
Shedding skin, adding rooms.
The past isn’t gone, it just settles in the foundations.
We live in the echoes of what you were.
We build on the promise of what you will be.

[Verse 2]
I stand by the Scottdale Mill.
I can almost hear George T. Scott's whistle calling the shift.
The clatter of looms weaving cotton duck for a world at war.
Now, the windows are vast and dark.
Inside, there’s exposed brick and stainless steel.
A hundred quiet lives where a thousand gears once turned.
From a factory floor to a living room floor.

[Bridge]
But becoming isn't always kind.
I remember the story of a wall.
Nineteen fifty-nine, a line of concrete on College Avenue.
A scar drawn to keep your own children apart.
We don't see it now.
But the shadow of that line is long.
It’s a debt in the mortar, a question you still have to answer.

[Chorus]
Oh, Decatur, you are always becoming.
Shedding skin, adding rooms.
The past isn’t gone, it just settles in the foundations.
We live in the echoes of what you were.
We build on the promise of what you will be.

[Outro]
The neighbors in Kirkwood planted seeds in tired soil.
Music spills from the porches in Harmony Park.
Another crane rises against the Georgia sky.
Another brick falls.
Another story begins.
What are you becoming now?