The Welch Street Market

Lyrics

The city archives have a file for Adair Park.
It's thin.
Got a plat map from 1893.
Says nothing about Welch Street.
The records are quiet.
But the street remembers.

We called the corner store Henderson's.
There was no sign, just a screen door that slapped shut.
Mr. Henderson himself, behind the counter since 1972.
Smelled of sawdust and Doublemint gum.
He'd sell you one egg.
A loose cigarette for a quarter.
Wrote your debt down in a blue Mead notebook he kept under the register.
Said, "Pay me when the railroad pays you."
Some did.

This wasn't commerce. It was a current.
Welch Street was the low wire humming through the neighborhood.
The credit and the gossip, the comfort and the news.
The part they don't put on the historic tour plaques.
The part that held.

Next door, the barbershop. Red and white pole, spinning slow.
A sun-faded picture of Dr. King taped to the mirror.
Deacon Charles ran it. Sharpest razor, dullest wit.
Best place to find out who was hiring, who was leaving, who was lying.
Saturday mornings, the smell of Barbicide and coffee.
He'd give a boy his first real haircut for free.
Said it was an investment in the neighborhood's dignity.
That was 1988. The pole spun right through the worst of it.

This wasn't commerce. It was a current.
Welch Street was the low wire humming through the neighborhood.
The credit and the gossip, the comfort and the news.
The part they don't put on the historic tour plaques.
The part that held.

Now the screen door is new. Got a fancy handle.
They sell craft beer where Henderson kept the bread.
The barbershop is a yoga studio now.
They invested in a different kind of dignity, I suppose.
The new folks are nice. They wave.
They don't know they're walking on the pages of that blue notebook.
They don't know the ghosts are watching, and mostly, smiling.

The pole stopped spinning in 2011.
But you walk by on a Saturday...
...you can still feel the hum.
Yeah.
The street remembers.