Will Yip - HUDSONVILLE MI 1956 lyrics

There are bridges over rivers There are moments of collapse There are drivers with their feet on the gla** You can kick but you can't get out There is history in the rooms of the house After dinner Do the dishes Mother hums The coffeemaker hisses on the stove The steam a crescendo The radio emergency bulletins and Everywhere wind You took the train down to Terra Haute, Indiana Visit family, your childhood home Give your mother her grandkid and father a kiss Put your luggage in your bedroom in the kitchen sit With your husband still up in Hudsonville Until the weekend when his shift ends at the furniture mill Running water for the dishes and the coffee on the stove Heard a warning from the corner on the radio And the gla** starts to rattle in the window frames So you went underground Took the staircase down To the cellar full of hunting equipment Held your baby in your arms Read the labels on mason jars Try not to think about your husband in Michigan Stay calm Keep the radio loud Take care Wind howls Father piles blankets in the corner by the furnace Mother lights candles It's a miracle the baby doesn't cry Back home doing yard work outside Husband being stubborn under dark skies Saw the fence by the neighbor's shed split Saw the kitchen windows start to bend in So you went down to the back steps then to the basement There were bookshelf plans on the workbench And a flashlight shining bright all night try not to think about your son and your wife And the lightning that scattered the night sky And the wind bursts that tore up the power lines At the workbench in the basement Where you sat and tried to wait out the night You called for three straight days Still with your family back home Up in Hudsonville the worst of the storms touched ground And the phone lines were down Turn the radio up There's a woman Who got thrown from her car into a barbed wire fence She was 6-months pregnant Both her and the baby lived You tried but the line or… I remember those nights I couldn't get through To you when quiet storms came rattled the window panes Couldn't keep a thing the same way when the storm blew in and the furniture rearranged I can see lightning there and a funnel cloud And her mother said “I swear I saw lightning in your eyes When that call got through to the other side.” Stay calm Keep the radio loud Stay down There are bridges over rivers Sirens in the distant Wind howls Keep down Then After dinner do the dishes Mother hums Wires snap Metal gets twisted There's the rattle of the window gla** Bending in Take the children down Terra Haute Coffee Thanksgiving Stay calm Keep down At the workbench Stay And the coffeemaker hisses Stay calm Keep down Turn the radio There are There are moments of collapse