Youngstown - Matthew Ryan

Here in north east Ohio

Back in eighteen oh three

James and Danny Heaton found the ore

That was lining Yellow Creek

They built a blast furnace

Here along the shore

And they made the cannon balls

That helped the union win the war

Here in Youngstown

Here in Youngstown

My sweet Jenny, I’m sinking down

Here, darling, in Youngstown

Well my daddy worked the furnaces

Kept them hotter than hell

I come home from 'Nam, worked my way to scarfer

A job that’d suit the devil as well

Taconite coke and limestone

Fed my children and made my pay

Then smokestacks reaching like the arms of god

Into a beautiful sky of soot and clay

Well, my daddy come on the Ohio works

When he come home from World War Two

Now the yard’s just scrap and rubble he said

«Them big boys did what Hitler couldn’t do»

These mills they built the tanks and bombs

That won this country’s wars

We sent our sons to Korea and Vietnam

Now we’re wondering what they were dying for

From the Monongahela Valley

To the Mesabi iron range

To the coal mines of Appalacchia

The story’s always the same

Seven hundred tons of metal a day

Now, sir, you tell me the world’s changed

Once I made you rich enough

Rich enough to forget my name

When I die I don’t want no part of heaven

I would not do heaven’s work well

I pray the devil comes and takes me

To stand in the fiery furnaces of hell