| Emmylou Harris – Blackhawk Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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This song is a haunting one (perhaps literally) about a girl who works in a bookshop in St. Clair who falls in love with a blue collar worker who works at a Dolfasco (Dominian Foundaries and Steel Company). His job is to 'push' ingots into the blast furnace to heat and melt them. Her working day is punctuated by the 'noon bell' while he has to clock in with a 'punch clock'. He's a member of the union and they drink at Liberty Station. The union protects them (strong arms). He's a small town hero, cool, distant and debonair. They meet and become lovers, making love in the long grass, with him still wearing his leather boots. She gives him a ring by Lake bear but does he still have it? Maybe they have grown up and had children, "raising kids from raising hell" and as the years have passed he has "faded a bit" and developed a drink problem. She was certain that she knew him, but does she still know him now that time has passed and he has changed from the young, debonair mystery she thought she understood into a somewhat ordinary family man? Or maybe there's a darker truth. The first verse starts in the present tense with her working in the bookshop, but he 'pushed' the ingots, in the past tense, so perhaps she is referring to something that happened in the past. The truth "bites and stings" - the truth being the hazardous fire that he works with in his daily job. At the end of the first verse the non bell is ringing, or tolling, for them and their love. In the second verse her heart os aching as she thinks of him slipping down into the blast furnace, perhaps remembering their love in his last moments. In the chorus she remembers his leather boots pointing upwards, heavenwards. They fall down onto their knees, repeating the link between making love and praying. "Over there" where the grass grew high could be where they made love, but also where he is buried. And why would they turn their faces into the wind while making love? More likely this is what she did at his funeral, as she asks, "Blackhawk, where are you now?" |
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