From the recording These Hills
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.
Lyrics
These Hills (Coal Street) Shawn Hedderman
A city built on coal and steel
Streets of cobblestone line these hills
Where a fall will more than skin your knee
Coal cinder in the alleyways
Remnants of the olden days
When black coke smoke hung in the air
CHORUS: Fathers, sons and brothers sweated in these mills
Once strong and proud, broken down, bones among these hills…These Hills
The narrow houses line up in rows
Where trolleys died out long ago
With the old generation, rusted…gone
Broken windows, busted doors
Boarded up churches and burned out stores
Yard signs beg kids to shoot no more
CHORUS
Proud neighborhoods once strong
The old blast furnaces cold so long
In this city of bridges and rusted steel
What one man treasures, others kill
They never guessed when they closed those mills
That coal and steel’d live on
CHORUS/OUTRO: In the….
Fathers, sons and brothers sweated in these mills
Once strong and proud, broken down, bones among these hills…
Fathers, sons and brothers sweated in these mills
They fed their families and built their lives on hot coal and steel
The mills are gone, but their dreams live on….they’re made of steel