Forty Years Under the Pipes
Take B delivers an intimate acoustic folk farewell, pairing weathered baritone vocals with delicate fingerpicking and mournful fiddle accents.
The stories behind Forty Years Under the Pipes
- Folk Storytelling and Fiddle Lines in Forty Years Under the Pipes — Take B delivers an intimate acoustic folk farewell, pairing weathered baritone vocals with delicate fingerpicking and mournful fiddle accents.
- Four Decades of Quiet Vigilance Beneath Hospital Floors — Forty Years Under the Pipes Take A honors the retiring technician whose career was built on modest inspection stickers and lifelong craftsmanship.
Lyrics
40 years under the pipes
Packing up the locker
Time to go home
I bought this leather toolbox back in
1984
Carried it through forty years of linoleum
floor The handle's worn down shiny
Where my fingers held the grip
A thousand little journeys
On a quiet healing trip
Upstairs the generations came
Were healed and walked away
They never knew the old man in the corner of the
bay Testing out the solar pads,
replacing broken glass
Watching all the seasons of human sorrow
pass
No plaques upon the courthouse lawn, no medals on
my chest Just a little green inspection tag
To show I did my best
For 40 years the biome they kept washed beneath
the ground Where life and death are balanced in
a soft, electric sound
A tenth of a degree of heat, a single
micro -amp I kept the living flicker
in the cold, unnoticed land
And though I never shook their hands
Or ever knew their names
My workbench was an altar to their
candlelight and flames.
I leave my junior partner with the flute and with the
wire Told him never treat this work
as just a job for hire
Behind that plastic casing and behind
that circuit board Is somebody's sweet mother
at the family parade tour
I closed my locker softly
Turned the brass key in the lock
Stepped out into the sunlight
At the chiming of the clock
For forty years the biome
They kept watch beneath the ground
Where life and death are balanced
In a soft electric sound
A tenth of a degree of heat
A single microwamp I kept the
living flicker in the cold unnoticed land
And though I never shook their hands or ever
knew their names
My workbench was an altar to their
candlelight and flames
Locker clear, shift is
finished,
sleep well, hospital
