Pittypat's Porch: The Gone-With-The-Wind Buffet

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Up on International Boulevard, nineteen sixty-seven.
They put rocking chairs on the porch, a little slice of pretend heaven.
Named for Aunt Pittypat, all fussy and grand.
You'd open the door and land in another land.
Gas lamps sputtering, casting a honey-gold light.
Everything was a story that night.

[Chorus]
But I remember the dresses.
The impossible width of them.
A sea of silk and starched cotton, a rustling hymn.
Girls sailing between tables, balancing their trays,
Lost in the hoop skirts of those long-gone Atlanta days.

[Verse 2]
Silver cup sweating in my hand, full of mint and ice.
The buffet table was a promise, a sweet Southern vice.
Sweet potato souffle, a bright, burnt orange gleam.
The fried chicken living up to the dream.
And the punch bowl smoking with that dry-ice trick,
A little bit of magic, cheap and quick.

[Chorus]
But I remember the dresses.
The impossible width of them.
A sea of silk and starched cotton, a rustling hymn.
Girls sailing between tables, balancing their trays,
Lost in the hoop skirts of those long-gone Atlanta days.

[Bridge]
Frank Allen said it himself, "Times have changed."
A tourist trap, a costume piece, rearranged.
But for a moment, you believed it.
The gentle sway, the careful way she moved in it.
And then came July, two thousand and eleven.
The porch rockers went still.

[Outro]
Just the memory of the fabric.
A whisper on the floor.
The rustle of a hoop skirt,
slipping out the door.