Oh, Susquehanna! Lyrics & Chords By Defiance, Ohio

We walk at the paths at the banks of the mighty Susquehanna, with our feet made muddy by your tributaries that trickle their way to the Chesapeake. It's like we follow I-83 down to harbor cities with strip malls and tar-mac, people swirling and teeming. It seemed so exciting, but now it seems like such a blight.

I grew up near Kentucky's Mt. Zion Road and all that was there was some old cemetery. All I wanted (was) to be able to walk to the store. Now I don't live there but there's too many stores, some apartments, and a Sunoco. And I wonder, what did they do with the bodies?

Oh, Susquehanna!

And I miss that place behind my house where I hiked and climbed and played, where I ditched this noisy century or just hid out from the decade. M-I homes thought it could stand to be updated, forced it all into a grid until it looked like the funny pages.

With every trace of life, it seems, confined within a frame, the faces move from day to day but the strips all look the same. And the punchlines are resoundingly unfunny for those trapped in this architecture of easy money.

And it feels like this could all come to no good. The kids who populate these cul-de-sacs will never know what stood beneath those cookie cutter houses: fields and streams and woods. They'll sit in cars and wait for mom to drive them out of this boring neighborhood.

Oh, Susquehanna!
And I wonder, what did they do with the bodies?