Electric Rail: The Spark That Connected

Lyrics

Before the rubber tires, before the gasoline haze...
there was a wire.
And a spark.

Eighteen eighty-nine, a new kind of ghost on the rails.
Joel Hurt strung a wire across the sky, a metal vine.
And you came.
A rumble felt first in the soles of our shoes on Auburn Avenue.
The bright flash where the pole kissed the line.
The smell of ozone, sharp and clean, cutting through the Georgia heat.
You were a promise, painted wood and polished brass.

Oh, the electric rail, the spark that connected us all.
The clang-clang-clang on the straightaway, the long squeal on the turn.
A river of steel flowing through the Fourth Ward.
Carrying the city's pulse, a rhythm we learned.
The great electric heart.

We'd wait at the corner, pennies tight in our fists.
Heading downtown, to the jobs, to the life beyond these blocks.
Saw the whole world through your windows.
Faces tired in the morning, hopeful on the way home.
A line drawn down the middle of the car, a quiet we all understood.
But still, you moved us.
Together.
On the same track.

Oh, the electric rail, the spark that connected us all.
The clang-clang-clang on the straightaway, the long squeal on the turn.
A river of steel flowing through the Fourth Ward.
Carrying the city's pulse, a rhythm we learned.
The great electric heart.

Then October nineteen sixteen. The wires went cold.
The silence on Ponce de Leon was louder than any bell.
And later... nineteen forty-nine.
They said the future smelled like diesel.
Said the bus was better.
They tore you down. Paved over your veins of steel.

But sometimes... when the city is quiet...
I can still feel you running.
A ghost tremor under the asphalt.
A spark...