Downtown Chamblee: The New Square

Lyrics

[Intro]
Four seventeen p.m.
Condensation ring on the metal table.
Eighty-two degrees in late September.
My glass is sweating more than I am.

[Verse 1]
I remember when this was just a lot.
A gap between the old brick buildings.
No surviving photographs of the silence.
Then in 1992, the station came.
A concrete platform waiting for a town to happen around it.
Just the sound of the Gold Line idling, going north.

[Verse 2]
Now there's the smell of hops from the Atlanta Brewing Company vents.
That was 2014.
New brick pavers, pretending they've been here forever.
Couples pushing strollers over them.
They laid a whole new history down.
Right over the dust.

[Chorus]
And I'm just sitting here with a beer on the sidewalk.
Watching the train pull in, pull out.
They built a memory here.
Poured the concrete, planted the trees, charged for the parking.
And damned if it doesn't work.
Drinking a beer where the blueprints used to be.

[Verse 3]
See those black posts by the crosswalk?
Those are salvaged trolley rails.
From the old Atlanta Street Railway.
Dug up and repurposed as bollards.
Something from a hundred years ago, just standing there.
Holding back the afternoon traffic.

[Bridge]
The rails are the only honest thing.
They were here for the cotton.
They were here for the soldiers from Camp Gordon.
Now they're here for us.
Coming out for a flight of craft beer and a walk around the new old square.
The purpose changes. The iron stays.

[Outro]
The sun is hitting the windows across the street.
My glass is almost empty.
The table is covered in little water rings now.
The train doors sigh open.
Then shut.