Around 1920 at age 16, my grandfather earned enough to pay his fare on a steamer from Ireland to America and settled in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. He found work there as a laborer and, eventually, foreman of a crew that worked installing the city trolley lines and "The Incline" on Mt. Washington.

My father worked for a time in a Pittsburgh steel mill before attending college. The stories he told of the mill and its coal-fired blast furnaces stuck with me. As a kid, I felt like I could see examples of how the white-hot molten steel forged the pride of both the steelworkers and the city.

My parents and grandparents long passed, I took my children to see some of their cobblestone and steel roots in Pittsburgh. As we drove down Coal Street and other sections of abandoned, dilapidated and crime-ridden blocks, a heaviness fell over me. I knew these people, now ghosts. I walked these streets with the old generations, gone. Now, boarded up churches and burned out stores remain. Most striking to me, were sparsely placed, commercially printed yard signs saying "Stop Shooting. We Love You." Heartbreaking.

A significant portion of my youth was spent in these hills of Pittsburgh. This song is a both a lamentation and celebration of those departed souls and their bones among these hills.