The Interstate That Never Was: A Neighborhood's Stand

Lyrics

I was having a beer at Leon's, out on the patio.
An old guy next to me, watching the traffic go slow.
He pointed with his glass down Ponce de Leon, said,
"You like how quiet this is? Friend, this whole street should be dead."

He said, "Back in the sixties, the planners had a dream.
Six lanes of concrete, a roaring, endless stream.
They called it I-485, the Stone Mountain Freeway.
Rolled out the blueprints, just to sweep us all away."
A thick black line on a map, cutting through the gables and porches,
Tearing down the Craftsman homes, extinguishing the torches
of a hundred years of life here. Progress, they all said.
A faster way to somewhere else, right over the flowerbeds.

But the people drew a different line, right here in the red clay.
They passed around the flyers, and they found the words to say:
"We'd rather have a city to live in, not just to drive through.
This neighborhood's not a shortcut for you."

There was a woman, Lillian Webb, I think that was her name.
She wouldn't let them quench the town's small, steady flame.
Met in church basements, fueled by coffee and by rage.
Mimeographed a thousand sheets to turn a different page.
They marched on the capitol, they stood up in the halls.
Wrote letters to the governor, ignoring all the calls
to step aside for progress, for the roaring engine's sound.
They decided they would rather keep their feet right on the ground.

'Cause the people drew a different line, right here in the red clay.
They passed around the flyers, and they found the words to say:
"We'd rather have a city to live in, not just to drive through.
This neighborhood's not a shortcut for you."

And the strangest thing happened. The governor, a man named Carter, listened.
The black line on the map just... faded. Something glistened.
A new idea. The money for the asphalt and the steel?
It built the MARTA trains instead. Made something real.
They traded all that noise for a different kind of track.
They fought the future off, and they never looked back.

So when you walk through Oakhurst, or Candler Park today,
And you hear the kids playing, and the quiet hold its sway...
Remember the ghost highway. The interstate that never was.
They saved this place. They saved it just because.
They'd rather have a city to live in.