***Starlight On The Rails, Indeed-In Honor Of The Hobo King Utah Phillips
DVD REVIEW
American Experience: Riding The Rails, PBS Productions, 1998
Growing up in the 1950’s I had a somewhat tenuous connection with trains. My grandparents lived close to a commuter rail that before my teenage years went out of service, due to the decline of ridership as the goal of two (or three) car garages gripped the American imagination in an age when gas was cheap and plentiful. In my teens though, many a time I walked those above-mentioned abandoned tracks to take the short route to the center of town. As an adult I have frequently ridden the rails, including a cross-continental trip that actually converted me to the virtues of air travel. Of course, my ‘adventures’ riding the rails is quite different than that being looked at in this American Experience documentary about a very, very common way for the youth of America to travel in the Depression-ridden 1930’s, the youth of my parents’ generation. My own experiences were merely as a paying passenger. Theirs was anything but. The only common thread between them and me is the desire expressed by many interviewees to not be HERE but to be THERE.
This tale of a significant number of youth in the 1930’s is held together by film footage of the time, some nice background music from the likes of Jimmy Rodgers and Doc Watson that evokes the ‘romance of the rails’ and ‘talking head’ interviews with the itinerant travelers, male and female. Despite various motives, from the desire to leave the parents’ house to being thrown out during those tough times, the stories they tell are of cold nights in open box cars, overcrowded jails, beatings by the ever present railroad "bulls" and the struggle to find a little work in order to be able to move on to the next locale and maybe some ‘peace’. Mainly this was the eternal heading West of the famous Professor Frederick Turner Jackson thesis- with this proviso- by then the land had run out and maybe the possibility of the dreams. A few interviewed are still driven by the lore of the rails, many had no regrets but mainly this is a very interesting trip down memory lane in a time before the automobile became readily accessible to teenagers.
No review of the life of the rails can omit the special jargon developed by those on the road, the ‘class distinctions' (hobo, bum, and tramp) between them and the rough and ready ‘code of honor’ of the rails (honored more in the breach than in the practice from what I can gather). This tradition has survived best in song by the likes of Woody Guthrie in any number of his songs written in the 1930’s, the classic Elizabeth Cotton song "Freight Train" and the work, including a song with the same title as the headline to this piece, of the recently deceased old Wobblie, folksinger, writer and rail rat extraordinaire Utah Phillips. Starlight On The Rails, indeed!
Daddy What's A Train? Utah Phillips
Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"
When I was just a boy and living by the track
Us kids would gather up the coal in big 'ole gunnysacks
Then we heard the warning sound as the train pulled into view
The engineer would smile and wave as she went rolling through
She blew so loud and clear, we had to cover up our ears
And we counted cars just as high as we could go
I can almost hear the steam those big old drivers scream
A sound my little kids will never know
Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"
I guess the times have changed, kids are different now
'Cause some don't even seem to know the milk comes from a cow
My little boy can tell the names of all the baseball stars
I remember how we memorized the names on railroad cars
The Wabash and the TP, Lackawanna, the IC
The Nickel-Plate and the good old Santa Fe
Just names out of the past, I guess they're fading fast
Every time I hear my little boy say
Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"
We climbed into the car, drove down into town
Right out the depot house, but no one was around
We searched the yard togheter for something I could show
But I knew there hadn't been a train for a dozen years or so
All the things I did when I was just a kid
How far away those memories appear
I guess it's plain to see they still mean a lot to me
'Cause my ambition was to be an engineer
Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"
Starlight On The Rails
This comes from reading Thomas Wolfe. He had a very deep understanding of the music in language. Every now and then he wrote something that stuck in my ear and would practically demand to be made into a song.
I think that if you talk to railroad bums, or any kind of bum, you'll see that what affects them the most is homelessness, not necessarily rootlessness. Traveling is all right if you have a place to go from and a place to go to. It's when you don't have any place that it becomes more difficult. There's nothing you can count on in the world, except yourself. And if you're an old blown bum, you can't even do that very well. I guess this is a home song as much as anything else.
We walked along a road in Cumberland and stooped, because the sky hung down so low; and when we ran away from London, we went by little rivers in a land just big enough. And nowhere that we went was far: the earth and the sky were close and near. And the old hunger returned - the terrible and obscure hunger that haunts and hurts Americans, and makes us exiles at home and strangers wherever we go.
Oh, I will go up and down the country and back and forth across the country. I will go out West where the states are square. I will go to Boise and Helena, Albuquerque and the two Dakotas and all the unknown places. Say brother, have you heard the roar of the fast express? Have you seen starlight on the rails?
I think about a wife and family,
My home and all the things it means;
The black smoke trailing out behind me
Is like a string of broken dreams.
A man who lives out on the highway
Is like a clock that can't tell time;
A man who spends his life just ramblin'
Is like a song without a rhyme.
Copyright ©1973, 2000 Bruce Phillips
FREIGHT TRAIN
(c) 1957 by Elizabeth Cotten. Sanga Music
Chorus:
Freight train, Freight train, run so fast
(rep.)
Please don't tell what train I'm on
They won't know what route I've gone
When I am dead and in my grave
No more good times here I crave
Place the stones at my head and feet
Tell them all that I've gone to sleep.
When I die, Lorde, bury me deep
Way down on old Chestnut street
Then I can hear old Number 9
As she comes rolling by.
DVD REVIEW
American Experience: Riding The Rails, PBS Productions, 1998
Growing up in the 1950’s I had a somewhat tenuous connection with trains. My grandparents lived close to a commuter rail that before my teenage years went out of service, due to the decline of ridership as the goal of two (or three) car garages gripped the American imagination in an age when gas was cheap and plentiful. In my teens though, many a time I walked those above-mentioned abandoned tracks to take the short route to the center of town. As an adult I have frequently ridden the rails, including a cross-continental trip that actually converted me to the virtues of air travel. Of course, my ‘adventures’ riding the rails is quite different than that being looked at in this American Experience documentary about a very, very common way for the youth of America to travel in the Depression-ridden 1930’s, the youth of my parents’ generation. My own experiences were merely as a paying passenger. Theirs was anything but. The only common thread between them and me is the desire expressed by many interviewees to not be HERE but to be THERE.
This tale of a significant number of youth in the 1930’s is held together by film footage of the time, some nice background music from the likes of Jimmy Rodgers and Doc Watson that evokes the ‘romance of the rails’ and ‘talking head’ interviews with the itinerant travelers, male and female. Despite various motives, from the desire to leave the parents’ house to being thrown out during those tough times, the stories they tell are of cold nights in open box cars, overcrowded jails, beatings by the ever present railroad "bulls" and the struggle to find a little work in order to be able to move on to the next locale and maybe some ‘peace’. Mainly this was the eternal heading West of the famous Professor Frederick Turner Jackson thesis- with this proviso- by then the land had run out and maybe the possibility of the dreams. A few interviewed are still driven by the lore of the rails, many had no regrets but mainly this is a very interesting trip down memory lane in a time before the automobile became readily accessible to teenagers.
No review of the life of the rails can omit the special jargon developed by those on the road, the ‘class distinctions' (hobo, bum, and tramp) between them and the rough and ready ‘code of honor’ of the rails (honored more in the breach than in the practice from what I can gather). This tradition has survived best in song by the likes of Woody Guthrie in any number of his songs written in the 1930’s, the classic Elizabeth Cotton song "Freight Train" and the work, including a song with the same title as the headline to this piece, of the recently deceased old Wobblie, folksinger, writer and rail rat extraordinaire Utah Phillips. Starlight On The Rails, indeed!
Daddy What's A Train? Utah Phillips
Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"
When I was just a boy and living by the track
Us kids would gather up the coal in big 'ole gunnysacks
Then we heard the warning sound as the train pulled into view
The engineer would smile and wave as she went rolling through
She blew so loud and clear, we had to cover up our ears
And we counted cars just as high as we could go
I can almost hear the steam those big old drivers scream
A sound my little kids will never know
Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"
I guess the times have changed, kids are different now
'Cause some don't even seem to know the milk comes from a cow
My little boy can tell the names of all the baseball stars
I remember how we memorized the names on railroad cars
The Wabash and the TP, Lackawanna, the IC
The Nickel-Plate and the good old Santa Fe
Just names out of the past, I guess they're fading fast
Every time I hear my little boy say
Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"
We climbed into the car, drove down into town
Right out the depot house, but no one was around
We searched the yard togheter for something I could show
But I knew there hadn't been a train for a dozen years or so
All the things I did when I was just a kid
How far away those memories appear
I guess it's plain to see they still mean a lot to me
'Cause my ambition was to be an engineer
Daddy what's a train? Is it something I can ride?
Does it carry lots of grown-up folks and little kids inside?
Is it bigger than our house? Well how can I explain
When my little boy and girl ask me "Daddy what's a train?"
Starlight On The Rails
This comes from reading Thomas Wolfe. He had a very deep understanding of the music in language. Every now and then he wrote something that stuck in my ear and would practically demand to be made into a song.
I think that if you talk to railroad bums, or any kind of bum, you'll see that what affects them the most is homelessness, not necessarily rootlessness. Traveling is all right if you have a place to go from and a place to go to. It's when you don't have any place that it becomes more difficult. There's nothing you can count on in the world, except yourself. And if you're an old blown bum, you can't even do that very well. I guess this is a home song as much as anything else.
We walked along a road in Cumberland and stooped, because the sky hung down so low; and when we ran away from London, we went by little rivers in a land just big enough. And nowhere that we went was far: the earth and the sky were close and near. And the old hunger returned - the terrible and obscure hunger that haunts and hurts Americans, and makes us exiles at home and strangers wherever we go.
Oh, I will go up and down the country and back and forth across the country. I will go out West where the states are square. I will go to Boise and Helena, Albuquerque and the two Dakotas and all the unknown places. Say brother, have you heard the roar of the fast express? Have you seen starlight on the rails?
I think about a wife and family,
My home and all the things it means;
The black smoke trailing out behind me
Is like a string of broken dreams.
A man who lives out on the highway
Is like a clock that can't tell time;
A man who spends his life just ramblin'
Is like a song without a rhyme.
Copyright ©1973, 2000 Bruce Phillips
FREIGHT TRAIN
(c) 1957 by Elizabeth Cotten. Sanga Music
Chorus:
Freight train, Freight train, run so fast
(rep.)
Please don't tell what train I'm on
They won't know what route I've gone
When I am dead and in my grave
No more good times here I crave
Place the stones at my head and feet
Tell them all that I've gone to sleep.
When I die, Lorde, bury me deep
Way down on old Chestnut street
Then I can hear old Number 9
As she comes rolling by.
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