North Highland Avenue: Tracks of Growth

Lyrics

North Highland...
You were the current, the spark.
You were the promise in the dark.

Before the bungalows, before the brick,
Just Collier's farm and red clay, thick.
Then the Highland Land Company's men,
With blueprints and a vision, back then.
I smell the pine resin on the air,
The iron song of a path laid bare.
Spike by spike, a steel spine put down,
A straight new river through furrowed ground,
From the edge of the woods to the heart of town.

Clang-clang goes the bell, a morning call!
The whine of the wire over it all.
You're the tracks of growth, the electric vein,
Washing the neighborhood with motion's rain.
North Highland Avenue, the line is drawn,
Carrying us all into the dawn.

And the houses rose up, one by one,
To catch the first light of the morning sun.
Porches built to hear you passing by,
Under a humming catenary sky.
Workers with lunch pails, shoppers with lists,
A future that on your strict schedule insists.
You didn't just move people, you made a place,
Gave a new neighborhood its hopeful, hurried pace.

Clang-clang goes the bell, a midday call!
The whine of the wire over it all.
You're the tracks of growth, the electric vein,
Washing the neighborhood with motion's rain.
North Highland Avenue, the line is drawn,
Carrying us all from dusk to dawn.

Now the asphalt hides your steel away,
A ghost rail sleeping under the day.
But when they dig for pipes, I see you gleam,
The flash of the original steel-rail dream.
And deeper still, a path much older,
Carved on the Mvskoke's patient shoulder.
You just followed the way things flow,
The oldest wisdom these ridges know.

The tracks of growth...
The line is drawn...
Still carrying us home.