Story Behind The Song

My experiences with growing up in Buffalo, NY.

Song Description

I grew up in a steel town in the last days of the plant's operation. Thousands of people lost their jobs and fled the city. The town went from a place where you couldn't hang your laundry out to dry, lest you wanted it to turn orange from all the rusted ore in the air, to a place struggling to bring in industy, and partially succeeding in the technology sector, where the pollutants are low. When you were hardly able to breathe, this town was teeming with life and money, but now that it's cleaned up, there's no people... except for the die hard Buffalonians, who are very genuine people, proud and welcoming. We are called the "City of Good Neighbors" and with very good reason. The people make living here well worth it, even if it is hard to find a job.

Lyrics

Living in this town, you hear the stories of the land,
Everbody and their mother used to work in that stupid plant.
They worked all damn day, breaking all their backs,
While breathing in the fumes spewing from the smoke stacks.
Oh Rome itself couldn't have built a better empire,
Nor the Pharoahs in Egypt have amassed a greater workforce.
They made this city strong, they could've built the streets in gold,
But instead they made a choice to leave us out in the cold.

There was a mass migration, people leaving town,
They left everything behind, no point in trying to sell,
Turning our smokey paradise into a cleaner, vacant hell,
With the business all dried up, there's noone left to pollute our well.
So maybe it was in the water, maybe it was in the air,
Maybe the lack of oxygen created a false sense of despair.
But now that the smoke's cleared and I can see the sun,
There's writing on the wall saying, "Humans zero, Nature one."

That's the way
The story goes
These days
Nobody speaks of sorrow, no
Of days gone by,
Or troubles still,
We just make good neighbors,
And hope
For the Best
Maybe next year our time will come....

Oh you can take our jobs, pack them up and leave this town,
Our money you can take but our hopes won't be let down.
We'll hold on to something, something to pull us through,
While we also hold each other because that's what good people do.
Snow may be the reason why our backs are so strong,
To carry all the weight of a nation doing us wrong.
So laugh if you will, but someday you'll see the truth,
But then this town will belong to the few, the proud, the true.