1953

Lyrics

[Intro]
Nineteen fifty-three.
The ground still remembers the heat of the fire from '48.
The ghost of Henry Richardson's chapel... a colder patch of air on the lawn.
A year of held breath. A quiet turning.

[Verse 1]
But the new stone went up.
Smelled of the quarry, and fresh-cut oak inside.
Perry, Shaw, and Hepburn sent the plans up from Boston.
They knew a thing or two about rebuilding the past.
A little more restrained, this time.
Less of God's big Romanesque anger.
More of a clean, colonial hope.
We watched the new steeple catch the autumn light.
A different finger pointing at the same sky.

[Chorus]
And that was the year. Nineteen fifty-three.
The sound of the mason's hammer finally fading.
Replaced by the crackle of a radio in the kitchen.
The future arriving, not in a flood.
But as a survey stake in a sleeping field.
As a quiet car pulling into a driveway after a long, long time.

[Verse 2]
Then came the news, end of July.
The twenty-seventh. Panmunjom.
A name nobody knew how to pronounce, but everybody understood.
Armistice.
It wasn't like the last time. No papers thrown from the windows.
Just a quiet nod over a fence post on the Common.
A long-distance call, a promise to be home by Thanksgiving.
The sound of a key in a lock that hadn't turned for two years.

[Chorus]
And that was the year. Nineteen fifty-three.
The sound of the mason's hammer finally fading.
Replaced by the crackle of a radio in the kitchen.
The future arriving, not in a flood.
But as a survey stake in a sleeping field.
As a quiet car pulling into a driveway after a long, long time.

[Bridge]
Then the men with the tripods came.
Didn't say much.
Just drove little wooden stakes into the back lots near Framingham Road.
Little flags of orange plastic.
At the town hall, they unrolled new maps that smelled of chemicals.
A thick black line, running west.
The Massachusetts Turnpike.
We talked about it at the general store.
Progress, they said. It'll cut the drive to the city in half.
And cut a few old farms in half, too.

[Outro]
A new chapel.
A son at the dinner table.
A thick black line on a map.
The year turned.
The foundations were set. For the road, for the peace, for the next hundred years.
Nineteen fifty-three.
We closed our eyes.
And waited for the sound of the bulldozers.