Editor’s Note: We drift into the 4th of July weekend today. It is a holiday many of us remember. It celebrates the history we used to know. I think of that family, swinging hammers, who helped build the railroad that runs by The Farm in 1858. It is pretty cool to hear the whistle in the morning, and the rumble of the rail.
– Vic
Author’s note: We took trains long before we learned to fly. Here in Savannah, we are daily serenaded by nearby train whistles and rail crossing clickety clacks.
W and I are headed for a December week in the Big Apple. We’re going to take the train.
– Marlow
Yeah, we’re goin’ back, goin’ back to find a simpler place in time on a midnight train from Georgia. We’re gonna once again live in its old-world times and leave behind friendless plague times. So we’re gonna take a sleeper car (woo woo woo) for city life we once knew. Yeah, we’re goin’ back to find a simpler yet livelier place one more time.
A-whooee-ah-whooee ol’ clickety-clack’s a-echoin’ back the blues in the night says the song.
-Marlow
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Been a long time since most have seen or heard a train
At Savannah’s crossings, they’re friends so we don’t complain
Slow rolling makes us stop our texting to the sky
Kids once again, we look and ask what’s rolling to where and why
Steel wheels waking up the night
Whistled crossings with bright red flashing light
It’s time we rode that Highball number 8 line
Before we and Amtrak run outta time
Gonna stare out the window while drinking whiskey
Gotta bring enough, a 15-hour ride goes by briskly
Hopefully the dining car will be serving us well
Wanna hear the ring of dinner and breakfast bells
Younger days are long since gone
But America’s trains still chug along
Booked us a December New York ticket to a yesterday
Palmetto Highball number 8 gonna take us away
Gonna ride that line, to another time, if only in our mind
America’s beautiful from the windows of a train
I put a penny on the tracks to flatten into a copper plane
It’s been too long since I heard the onboard sounds of a train
Gotta do it one more time before we run outta time
We built lines to western gold mines, shipped Dixie cotton to the heart of Yankeeland
Scotch Irish folk worked long and hard to lay tracks through steep mountain passes
So, politicians could ride and campaign while they lounged in first class on their asses
Movies made me dream about robbing trains of gold
When I heard the whistles blow
Then I thought there’d be prison bars
For robbing them railroad cars
So, I put my pennies on the tracks
Smiled and laughed while they got click clacked
Younger days are long since gone
But America’s trains still chug along
Booked us a December New York ticket to a yesterday
Palmetto Highball number 8 gonna take us away
Gonna ride that line, to another time, even if it’s only in our mind
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