Jerry Rasmussen, who initiated this thread, has crafted many memorable lines himself, but one that has always struck me as truly capturing the "idiom of the people" opens his song about Dixon, Illinois:

    "Used to be was all I knew was Dixon."

My wife, Caroline, sings Craig Johnson's gem "Goodbye to the Lowlands" which talks of the changes in one's old home town wrought by the bulldozers of progress. His second verse observes that developments are often named after the areas they've destroyed -- you know, that long line of condominiums called "Walnut Grove" that stands where the walnut trees once were, but are no more:

    They've landscaped the cornfields, the back roads are paved,
    And they've built lots of houses with false country names;
    Names of the farms and the fields that they've changed,
    But they can't hide the truth of what little remains.

Bob Coltman's "Weaver's Reverie" sets the stage in the first verse of his heartbreaking song of the factory girls of 19th century Lowell, Masscahusetts, thusly:

    Where the weaver stands to work, she can scarcely see the sky;
    The songs of the sparrow can't be heard.
    The golden sunlight out the dirty window shines;
    She turns to her weaving without a word.

and the chorus observes:

    Slap go the belts against the pulleys;
    Shuttles fly across the loom.
    There are hours to go, and they never go so slow
    As they go in the weaving room.

    Sandy