Winter Coin Legacy (version 2)

Intro

Company scrip in his palm, no silver, no shine

Grandfather clocked in the dark, clocked out on a line

Store took the tokens, kept the family thin

He tucked one real coin every payday in

Verse 1

Gate creaked open at four, lantern swinging on a chain

Forty men in the shaft, chasing coal through the vein

Boss paid in tin discs, said it's good as gold

Only good at his counter, that's the trick that he told

Grandfather bit the metal, knew the weight was a lie

Kept his silver in a boot heel, kept it out of their eye

Sunday he'd count what he'd hidden by the ash in the grate

One dime, then a nickel, stacking slow against fate

Winter closed the mine down, snow up past the door

Company store shut its books, said we don't lend no more

That's when the coin came out, wrapped in a cotton rag

Bought flour, bought coal oil, kept the fire from a sag

Scars on his knuckles from the pick, plate cracked on the shelf

He never told the union, he just saved it for himself

Said the system prints you numbers, tells you that's your worth

But real weight don't wash off, real weight comes from the earth

Chorus

A winter coin don't spend

It just remembers you survived

Every scar's a debt we paid

And came out on the other side

Keep one coin they can't touch

Keep one truth they can't erase

A winter coin don't spend

It just remembers your name

Verse 2

Forty years since the shaft closed, still the coin's in the drawer

I run numbers on a corner now, different gate, same war

They pay you in exposure, pay you in a like

Tell you that's currency, tell you that's the life

I keep a real dollar folded flat behind my phone

Learned from a dead man's boot heel how to eat alone

Landlord wants his tokens, wants it counted on his terms

I keep a separate stack for the season when it burns

Every hustle's got a store that only takes their kind

Every boss got a ledger keeping you behind

But I clock what's real and what's just paper in the wind

Grandfather's coin taught me save the one that never bends

Ash on my collar now is smoke from a different flame