Telegraph Rd. -- Motor City

grew up across the river from this place -- one of the cogs in Henry Ford's Motor City Auto Machine

Spending the night with Dire Straits fifteen minute long "Telegraph Road" on repeat. I bought beer from a shady liquor store on Telegraph Road in high school! How have I never heard this? From Henry Ford to factories shutting down to wild nights racing the streetlights with a bottle of booze in the console, this song sounds like the backdrop of my childhood in the Motor City:

A long time ago came a man on a track

Walking thirty miles with a sack on his back

And he put down his load where he thought it was best

He made a home in the wilderness

He built a cabin and a winter store 

And he plowed up the ground by the cold lake shore

And the other travelers came walking down the track

And they never went further, no, they never went back

Then came the churches, then came the schools

Then came the lawyers, and then came the rules

Then came the trains and the trucks with their loads

And the dirty old track was the Telegraph Road

Then came the mines, then came the ore

Then was the hard times, then there was a war

Telegraph sang a song about the world outside

Telegraph Road got so deep and so wide

Like a rolling river

And my radio says tonight it's gonna freeze

People driving home from the factories

There's six lanes of traffic

Three lanes moving slow

I used to like to go to work, but they shut it down

I've got a right to work, but there's no work to be found

Yes, and they say we're gonna have to pay what's owed

We're gonna have to reap from some seed that's been sowed

And the birds up on the wires and the telegraph poles

They can always fly away from this rain and this cold

You can hear them singing out their telegraph code

All the way down the Telegraph Road

You know, I'd sooner forget, but I remember those nights

When life was just a bet on a race between the lights

You had your head on my shoulder, you had your hand in my hair

Now you act a little colder, like you don't seem to care

But believe in me, baby, and I'll take you away

From out of this darkness and into the day

From these rivers of headlights, these rivers of rain

From the anger that lives on the streets with these names

Cause I've run every red light on memory lane

I've seen desperation explode into flames

And I don't want to see it again

From all of these signs saying, "sorry, but we're closed"

All the way

Down the Telegraph Road

Dire Straits, "Telegraph Road"