Odes to Avondale Estates · Track 11 · middle
MARTA Avondale Station: The Eastern Terminus
MARTA Avondale Station — the eastern terminus of the East Line, the morning commute crowd, the way the rail station kept the town connected to downtown Atlanta across decades of suburban drift. The platform under the Tudor-era pines. Sisukiro on the morning platform.
Lyrics
[Intro] Seven-fifteen, weekday morning. The air tastes of ozone off the third rail. Warm metal, and the longleaf pines planted in 1928. Their needles mix with the diesel from the feeder bus. Here you come. [Verse 1] Budd Company cars, stainless steel from 1979. Sliding into the platform under a canopy George Willis never imagined. He saw a contained English village in 1924. He didn't see this silver artery. He didn't see us, standing in our work clothes. Phones glowing in the pre-dawn blue. Quiet nods between neighbors. The same faces, the same patient wait. This shared, silent ritual. [Chorus] And the doors sigh open, a metallic breath. Eastern terminus, western start. Taking the Tudor dream to the glass towers downtown. This is the tether, the current that pulls us out and brings us home. The Blue Line, humming under our feet. The promise of the city, leaving the quiet streets behind. [Verse 2] I remember the old faregates. The heavy tokens from the first year. Each one stamped with a tiny Tudor rose. A little nod from the transit board to the town's strange story. A copper flower to buy a ride out of the fantasy. No one uses them now, of course. Just a tap of a card. But the gesture remains, buried in the concrete. A ghost of connection between the slate roofs and the steel wheels. [Chorus] And the doors sigh open, a metallic breath. Eastern terminus, western start. Taking the Tudor dream to the glass towers downtown. This is the tether, the current that pulls us out and brings us home. The Blue Line, humming under our feet. The promise of the city, leaving the quiet streets behind. [Bridge] Inside, the windows frame the blur. The back of AvonHouse, the edge of the lake. And then just the green of DeKalb County flying past. We are suspended between two lives. The one we chose, with the quiet porch and the old oaks... and the one that pays for it, miles to the west. This train is the bridge between them. Forty minutes, every morning. [Outro] The platform is empty again. Just for a moment. The smell of warm rails hangs in the pine-scented air. The next train is seven minutes away. The heart of the town, beating on a schedule. Out and back. Out and back.