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You cease to smell the steel plant |
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After you've lived there for a while |
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Smoke is snow is ash are leaves that blow |
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Through the air aloft |
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All our houses dim their sliding |
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To the same soot gray style |
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And we hang our laundry out on |
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SundaysWhen they turn the furnaces off |
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Everybody's daddy works up on the line |
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The Stienbrenners and the |
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Wilczewskis |
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Have been there the longest time |
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And everybody's mommy squints into the sun |
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Sunday afternoon after all the laundry's done |
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And sometimes a distant siren |
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Can set a dog to barking late at night |
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Then it dominoes on down |
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Till every dog is joining in |
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The first rumors of the lay offs |
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Sang like a distant siren might |
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And we all perked up our ears |
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And paced the fence of the ensuing din |
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And every night, we were glued to the |
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TV newsAt six o'clock' |
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Cuz it was hard to tell what was real |
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And what was talk |
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They explained about the cutbacks |
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All the earnest frowns |
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What they didn't say was that the plant |
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Was slowly shutting down |
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This town is not the kind of place |
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That money people go |
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They make their jokes up on the |
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TVAbout all the snow |
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And they're building condos downriver |
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From where the plant had been |
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But nobody really lives here |
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Now that the air is clean |
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And the president assured us |
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It was all gonna trickle down |
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Like it'd be raining so much money |
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That we'd be sad to see the sun |
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Mr. Wilczewski's brother had some business |
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Out in Denver, so they left |
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DenverEverybody knows they were the lucky ones |
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You cease to smell the steel plant |
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After you've been here for a while |
