Re-Tuning (excerpt from chapter 17)

In the late 1980s, I received word that a classmate, from elementary school, was killed in a refinery accident in my hometown. Since I had moved away, I had not thought much about the industrial area where I grew up. I had forgotten about so many old acquaintances who chose to stay in that place to live and work. The distant news led me to my Gibson guitar. And, after many years of writing just a few meaningless songs, a blues melody came into my head and became a song called "Oiltown (A Song for George):"

George was just thirty-seven, when it took his happy life
Flashed in an explosion before his very eyes
Like all the men who chose it, the chemicals and noise
He could turn it off at four o'clock to drink one with the boys

And their fathers and their uncles all knew what was going on
Cause that's the way it was, you lived in Oiltown

They put up with the dangers and the horror stories they heard
For the sake of that sweet paycheck, just seemed a bit absurd
But it was very easy to go home to the TV
To the wife and the kids and the dreams of winning the state lottery

And their fathers and their uncles all knew what was going on
Cause that's the way it was, you lived, you stayed, in Oiltown

When George was gone and the shock slowly lost its iron grip
The men went back to that fateful site to continue on their trip
And George's wife and child, left alone in the shadows of the pain
Maybe they'd find escape someday, from the living drain, of Oiltown

And their fathers and their uncles all knew what was going on
Cause that's the way it was, you lived, you stayed, you died,
in Oiltown