Odes to Adair Park · Track 9 · middle

The Disinvestment Years: 1970s through 1990s

The hard middle decades — the white flight of the 1960s-70s, the redlining and disinvestment that hollowed out parts of southwest Atlanta, the crack era of the late 80s-early 90s. UPBEAT, NOT DESPAIRING — focus on the families who STAYED, who held their houses through it all, the porch lights that never went off. Repton bears witness with respect.

Lyrics

[Intro]
The sound of leaving has a sound.
A U-Haul truck groaning down Tift Street in the July heat.
The echo where a screen door used to slam shut.
1972. The year the quiet began.

[Verse 1]
The maps got drawn in a tall building downtown.
Red ink bled around the bungalows on Pearce Street.
A banker's pencil, a quiet closing of a loan, of a door.
They called it flight. A grand, soaring word.
We called it Tuesday.
We watched the city turn its back, looking north up the long throat of Lee Street.
And the quiet got loud in the afternoons.
The yards got long. The paint began to peel.

[Chorus]
But the porch light on Lillian Avenue stayed on.
The one on Mayland Circle stayed on.
Not a statement. Not a monument. Just a fact.
A yellow bulb against a gathering dark.
We just kept the porch lights on.
This was home. We were holding the line.

[Verse 2]
Then the quiet broke. A different decade. 1988.
A different kind of noise after midnight.
Sirens painting the bedroom windows blue and red, over and over.
The whispers on the corner weren't about the weather anymore.
Fear is a cold draft under the front door you can't plug.
They said the neighborhood was gone for good.
Read its name in the paper like an obituary for a stranger.
But we were still making dinner.
Still sending kids to school with their homework done.

[Chorus]
And the porch light on Elbert Street stayed on.
The one on Catherine Street SW stayed on.
Not a protest. Not a prayer. Just a habit.
A 60-watt bulb against a hungry ghost.
We just kept the porch lights on.
This was home. We were holding home.

[Bridge]
No one wrote our names down in a book at City Hall.
There's no plaque for the ones who just swept the walk.
Who patched the roof after the storm.
Who knew the sound of their neighbor's Ford Granada coming home from the second shift.
The public record is a quiet, empty room.
But the houses remember. The old oak trees remember.
The simple, stubborn act of staying is its own archive.

[Outro]
Slowly, the dark got tired of fighting.
The sirens found other streets to haunt.
1993. 1995.
A new kind of quiet started to grow in the cracks.
The light was still on.
Waiting for the sun.
Just waiting.
Still on.