Odes to Alpharetta · Track 8 · middle
Hopewell School's First Bell
Hopewell School (now Hopewell Middle) — one of the original Milton County schoolhouses, the one-room origin, the first teacher who walked from Roswell, the bell that rang at 8 a.m. for a hundred years. Education as the slow accumulation of a county's civic memory. Sisukiro at the bell pull.
Lyrics
[Intro] My hand on the rope. Rough and cold in the January air. Before the first light hits the cupola. Just the sound of my own breathing. [Verse 1] You were new in 1892. A clean hemp line through a hole in the ceiling. The first hand that held you belonged to a woman whose name the county ledger forgot to keep. She walked from Roswell, in the dark. Carried the learning in her coat pockets. Her pull was the first promise of the day. [Chorus] And this is the pull. The gathering sound. The cast-iron voice that says 'come in from the cold.' Eight a.m. over the fields of Milton County. Hopewell. Hopewell. A bell is a kind of anchor. [Verse 2] And they came. Fourteen children, first names only in the book. Leaving trails in the frost. They smelled of wood smoke and damp wool. Sat on the long benches, slates on their knees. I think of the two children a ranch hand brought in 1904. Gone from the tax digest a year later. Did they hear your call that one winter? Did they learn a single letter? [Chorus] And this is the pull. The gathering sound. The cast-iron voice that says 'come in from the cold.' Eight a.m. over the fields of Milton County. Hopewell. Hopewell. A bell is a kind of anchor. [Bridge] In 1927, a boy tied a live opossum to you. Just for the story of it. Just to hear the teacher gasp. You remember that hand, too. The nervous laughter. You hold a hundred years of hands. The firm grip, the tired one, the hurried one. The one that pulled you just for the joy of the sound. [Outro] My hand on the rope. Her hand on the rope. Their hands on the rope. All at once.