Incorporation Day

Lyrics

The year is nineteen hundred and eight.
A scattering of farms. A name not yet fixed to the gate.
Just land sloping toward the water.
And the need for order.
The dust from the unpaved roads settles on the window sills.
Dairies still breathing morning steam against the hills.
The talk is of services, of water lines and light.
Of taking governance into their own hands, of doing what is right.
Not for the county, but for themselves.
Taking the future down from dusty shelves.
On the twenty-third day of October, the papers were affirmed.
A new name written on the map, a lesson to be learned.
Ocean View, California.
Born of ink and ambition.
The Great Register of Voters closed, a new chapter opened in its place.
A municipality given a name, and time, and space.
The first five men step forward from the crowd.
Their names spoken quietly, not yet aloud.
A.H. Clapp to preside, with a steady hand.
Reimers and Beach to help him understand
The needs of this new land.
Buel and Ruedrich, their signatures on the plan.
To build a city from a view and a patch of sand.
On the twenty-third day of October, the papers were affirmed.
A new name written on the map, a lesson to be learned.
Ocean View, California.
Born of ink and ambition.
The Great Register of Voters closed, a new chapter opened in its place.
A municipality given a name, and time, and space.
And the view itself begins to change.
Not the water, not the distant mountain range.
But the view from a window, now a citizen's home.
The view of a future they could call their own.
A name that held a promise, clear and bright,
even if it would not last beyond a single year's light.
A first step is everything.
The autumn air is crisp off the bay.
The ink is dry.
It is Incorporation Day.
Ocean View.
October twenty-third.
Nineteen-oh-eight.