Heritage Sandy Springs: Saving The Spring

Lyrics

It wasn't the soil. The soil is clay.
It was the water. 
Pushing up through the gravel bed, clear and cold.
The sandy bottom that gave us our name.

Eighteen forty-two. Wilson B. Hammond signs the papers.
He bought the trees, the path, the damp earth.
He bought the water that tasted of iron and time.
For generations, it was just there.
A landmark, a given.
The place the kids went.
The place the stories started.

Then the maps came out. And the men in clean trucks.
Bulldozers sleeping just over the hill.
They saw four and a half acres of prime real estate.
They wanted the lot.
They didn't care about the source.
They wanted the profit, and they were ready to pave the source.

Nineteen eighty-five. A different kind of meeting.
Not in a boardroom. In a church basement, a library.
The smell of stale coffee and sheer will.
Eva Galambos, drawing a line in the sand.
The Historic Community Foundation.
Just a name on a piece of paper, at first.
Just a promise whispered against the roar of progress.

Because the maps were out. And the men in clean trucks.
Bulldozers sleeping just over the hill.
They saw four and a half acres of prime real estate.
They wanted the lot.
They didn't care about the source.
They wanted the profit, and they were ready to pave the source.

Five years. Five years of passing the hat.
Of bake sales and phone calls and knocking on doors.
Until nineteen ninety. A check is written. The deeds are signed.
And the Williams-Payne house, built in sixty-nine... eighteen sixty-nine...
creaks down the road on rollers.
An old ghost finding a new home.
Saving the house to save the spring.

Now the well-house stands guard.
The museum doors opened in ninety-nine.
The children have picnics on the green.
And the water...
The water still pushes up through the sand.
Eva said it plain.
"We fought hard."
And we won.