Buckhead Village: The Streetcar Surge

Lyrics

There’s a hum under the asphalt.
A wire, buried deep.
Peachtree Road doesn't remember.
But it still can't sleep.

Before the glass towers, before the valet lines,
there was a spine of steel, a current running north.
The Number 23 car, they called it.
Clanging out of Five Points in a shower of sparks.
It was 1904.
The air tasted of damp earth and the sharp smell of progress.

The streetcar surge, a copper vein.
Tying the center to the edge of the rain.
The rattle and sway down the middle of the road.
An electric ghost carrying a forgotten load.
That's the pulse.
The engine of this place.
Felt beneath this polished space.

I see their faces at the windows.
Hats and gloves and Sunday dress.
Past the little wooden houses in Garden Hills.
Watching the pines give way to the promise of a country crossroads.
The conductor pulls the cord, a single, clear bell rings.
End of the line, where a buck's head hung from a tree.
Just a story then, already becoming history.

The streetcar surge, a copper vein.
Tying the center to the edge of the rain.
The rattle and sway down the middle of the road.
An electric ghost carrying a forgotten load.
That's the pulse.
The engine of this place.
Felt beneath this polished space.

They pulled the steel up by 1949.
Poured the new road smooth and wide.
Made way for the automobile, for a different kind of pride.
But the energy never vanishes.
The path is etched right there.
A phantom of forward motion, hanging in the air.

A current still runs here.
Still runs here.
The surge...