Granite City

Soundcloud. Featured on Rust Belt Ballads. 
Granite City was my farewell song to my hometown of St Cloud, MN (well, more accurately, the nearest city to my hometown), reflecting on the changes it had gone through in the decades prior to my own departure, and the changes it would surely go through before I came back. 

C am 
Where the Mississippi Water rolls along to meet the Sauk
Dm F G 
And the river bank slopes down over the gray and rosy rock
C Am 
Granite City said the sign; granite was the prison wall
Dm F G C
But I scarcely met a quarryman in the city there at all

Chorus:
F C Am
Now the red and broken stone lies along the railroad tracks
Dm F G 
The quarry days are gone, boys, they’re never coming back
C Am 
Still the pulley gives a groan and the engine gives a roar
Dm F G C
But scarce a soul quarries stone in granite city anymore 

Oh the ringing and the blasting used to hammer through the day
Where the men went down into the pits to haul the stone away
And there were barges on the river and the train tracks that led
To the builders in the city hauling off the St Cloud red

Chorus

But that was long ago, and time has rolled along
The best stone’s all been taken, the industry’s moved on
And what we’ve got left here, it isn’t like back then
They’ve got new machines to do the work of fifty men

Chorus

Now the drag lines and conveyers rise up high above the scree
The engineers here working for the Lockheed company
And the big box and the strip mall sprout like weeds out of the ground
The pits are all just swimming holes on the outskirts of town
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