Cornwells Heights Safe
This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the
end of the beginning. – Winston Churchill, 1942
Good Morning, America. How Are Ya?
Sunday, September 18, 2005
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The
Story of The City of New Orleans
It’s
Sunday. Cornwells Heights survives. Continuing
the job of fixing Amtrak can wait till tomorrow.
Ask
anyone, especially a bluegrass fan, what the best train song, or even what the best
song of Americana is, and you may come back with a vote for The City of New
Orleans, the ballad with the famous refrain, “Good morning, America. How Are Ya?” It was written by Steve Goodman, and first performed only a few
miles from our station at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 1970, almost exactly
35 years to the day before the beginning of the campaign to save Cornwells
Heights.
The
song apparently didn’t really catch hold until Arlo Guthrie recorded it and
sent it up the charts in 1972. Many
other artists have performed and recorded it since then. I’ve checked. I bought eight different CDs yesterday, looking for just the
right rendition. The “right” rendition for
contemporary ears, in my opinion, is the version recorded by Randy
Scruggs. The original Goodman and
Guthrie versions are also great, and if you have a chance to listen to all
three in chronological order, you can hear the song age like a very fine wine. Randy Scruggs pierced the song’s sweet spot
with the right tempo, the right orchestration, the right choral backup, and just
the right clacking of the tracks and the tracks and the tracks…
Just
before he died, John Denver put out a very good album of train songs, entitled All
Aboard, which includes The City of New Orleans, and which can easily
be justified as an additional CD purchase by the hauntingly poignant song
thereon, Jenny Dreamed of Trains, which begins (and secretly ends) the
album. John Denver died in the crash of
a Long-EZ airplane he had bought the day before in October, 1997. Apparently he either forgot to gas up his
secondary fuel tank or failed to switch over to it in time when the first one ran
dry. The last song listed on the last
of his albums is The City of New Orleans.
In
1970, the year the song was written, The City of New Orleans was a train
run by the Ilinois Central Railroad from Chicago to New Orleans. Also in 1970, Amtrak was created by
an act of Congress. Shortly thereafter,
Amtrak began to take over the no-longer-profitable passenger rail services of
various railroads around the country, including the Illinois Central.
Rescued
thirty-some years ago from sure death by Amtrak – which is threatened, even as
I write, with a slow starving death of its own – today there still exists
a train called The
City of New Orleans. Miracle be
that this old lonely train through America’s heartland has survived to roll and beat its way to the
sea this long – by an odd twist of fate, it’s now the city that’s missing. Amtrak, four good trainmen I met with three
days ago, and perhaps even the steel heart of the crying rails itself tried to
rescue those they could from the City.
But they couldn’t, because the City said, “No, go quickly now before the
winds take your trains and your tracks. Hurricanes, I’ve seen before.
Save yourself, lest I need you the worse tomorrow.” And the train left empty for
Memphis, with only the screams of the winds at its back to cover its own mournful
cry in the night, a lullaby the delta has slept to for ever, ever so long, in
soft nights and dark nights alike.
“Amtrak
offered
to evacuate people from New Orleans, but city officials declined and the
last train left the city - empty.”
But
the City will come back someday, and the lonely old train will yet come back a
survivor to the City.
I
have here transcribed, as best I possibly can without the sounds, the Randy
Scruggs rendition of The City of New Orleans. If, in the reading, a tear should come to your eye at first in
sorrow, hold on to it – read on and read again, until the sound of the tracks
and the steel in the rails, and the steel in the memories, and the steel in the
men who made them come back to you – and then perhaps the tear you held in
sorrow will hold hope.
Please enjoy as you can, and hum or sing along with one of the greatest songs from America’s heartland, The City of New Orleans.
by Steve Goodman
as sung by Randy Scruggs
Ridin' on The
City of New Orleans,
Illinois
Central, Monday morning rail,
Fifteen cars,
and fifteen restless riders,
Three
conductors, twenty-five sacks of mail.
Out on the
southbound odyssey,
The train
pulls out of Kankakee
And rolls
along past houses, farms, and fields.
Passin' towns
that have no name,
Freight yards
full of old black men,
And the
graveyards of the rusted automobiles.
Good morning,
America. How are ya?
Say, don't you
know me? I'm your native son.
I'm the train
they call The City of New Orleans.
I'll be gone
five hundred miles when the day is done.
Dealin' card
games with the old men in the club car,
Penny a point,
ain't nobody keepin' score.
Pass the paper
bag that holds the bottle.
Feel the
wheels rumblin' 'neath the floor.
And the sons
of Pullman porters,
And the sons
of engineers
Ride their
daddies' magic carpet made of steel.
Mothers with
their babes asleep
Are rockin' to
the gentle beat,
And the rhythm
of the rails is all they feel.
Good morning,
America. How are ya?
Say, don't you
know me? I'm your native son.
I'm the train
they call The City of New Orleans.
I'll be gone
five hundred miles when the day is done.
Nighttime on The
City of New Orleans,
Changin' cars
in Memphis, Tennessee.
Half way home
-- we'll be there by mornin',
Through the
Mississippi darkness,
Rollin' down
to the sea.
But all the
towns and people
Seem to fade
into a bad dream,
And the steel
rail still ain't heard the news.
The conductor
sings that song again.
The
passengers will please refrain,
"This train's
got the disappearin' railroad blues."
Good morning,
America! How are ya?
Say, don't you
know me? I'm your native son.
I'm the train
they call The City of New Orleans.
I'll be gone
five hundred miles when the day is done.
– Rick