The Dodge Brothers

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a machine shop, two men working, in rhythm)
John and Horace. Never apart. Not once.

[Verse 1]
They were machinists first, and good ones, the best in Detroit,
they made the engines and the axles for a man named Henry Ford
before he was Henry Ford, and they took stock instead of cash,
which turned out to be the single smartest thing that anyone did.
Then they built their own, and it was better built than his,
and they were rich, and they were loud, and they were inseparable.

[Chorus]
The Dodge Brothers! Both of them! It was always both of them!
Same shop, same house nearly, same temper, same laugh!
And they died in the same year — nineteen twenty —
eleven months apart, and neither of them fifty-seven!
The Dodge Brothers. John in January.
Horace in December. The same year. The same year.

[Verse 2]
John got influenza in New York in the pandemic,
pneumonia after it, and it took him in the January.
And Horace — who had the same illness and recovered —
did not recover from the other thing. From the missing.
They say he never got over it. They say he stopped.
Cirrhosis in December. But they say he stopped in January.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
And the name went on without either of them for a century,
on trucks, on hemis, on muscle cars, on a ram's head badge,
none of which they saw, none of which they'd recognise,
sold and resold through Chrysler and Daimler and back again.
Two machinists from Michigan who died in the same year
and whose surname is now shouted at drag strips.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(the machine shop, one man's rhythm, then none)
Eleven months.
He only lasted eleven months without him.