1953

Lyrics

[Intro]


[Verse 1]
The roosters still crow.
But now there's this other sound.
A new chorus at dawn.
Studebakers and Fords, coughing to life on gravel drives.
The fathers head east on Route 9.
Their headlights cut the last of the mist.
Old men on porches, hands on their knees, watch them go.
They don't say much.
Just watch the taillights shrink toward Framingham.
Toward the city.

[Chorus]
This is the new arithmetic.
Nineteen fifty-three.
More names in Ethel Brigham's book.
More lights on in the evening.
A blue flicker behind the curtains where the radio used to be.
The quiet hum of the future arriving.
Not with a bang.
Just... arriving.

[Verse 2]
The walls of the Fayville Elementary school seem thinner now.
You can hear the voices swelling inside.
The baby boom, they call it.
A rising tide of children.
At the Town Hall meeting, the air is thick with pipe smoke and worry.
Figures on a chalkboard.
Budgets for new classrooms.
And on the wall, a poster.
A family smiling, looking up at a dark sky.
Civil Defense. Duck and Cover.
Just in case.

[Chorus]
This is the new arithmetic.
Nineteen fifty-three.
More names in Ethel Brigham's book.
More lights on in the evening.
A blue flicker behind the curtains where the radio used to be.
The quiet hum of the future arriving.
Not with a bang.
Just... arriving.

[Bridge]
We share party lines now.
You pick up the phone to call a neighbor,
and hear a voice you don't know, talking about prices in Boston.
The iceman's truck still makes its rounds,
passing driveways with new electric refrigerators glinting in the kitchen window.
The paper advertises a bake sale for the church roof,
and right beside it, plans for a backyard bomb shelter.

A peculiar kind of peace.

[Outro]

Night falls.
The blue light in the window.
Lucy Ricardo is laughing about something.
And the town bell rings out the hour.

The same bell.
A different town.