The Cement Plant

The Cement Plant in Alpena was a grey and ugly mass
At the far north of town where most people would not pass

Those who worked that factory did so in three shifts
So that factory owners could enjoy the workers' gifts

There were huge hot kilns to heat the limestone and the men
Thirty years of those kilns were the death of Daddy Ben

His lungs were coated with the crud from that miasmic space
Those kinds of situations were for workers commonplace

Some men in the 1940s tried to improve the sad condition
Management did not welcome the working men's ambition   

Those impertinent supporters of the labor union movement
Were moved out themselves and there was no improvement 

My eyes still fill with tears when I think of Daddy's death
As he lay there and he struggled just to get his final breath