On A Slow Train, From Houston To Dallas

Toward midnight , an hour later than scheduled, the train headed slowly west for Dallas. Texas hadn't seen such a Whistlestop Campaign since 1948, and the train had to be slotted in between the regular trains with their farm produce, and their carloads of coal, and their freight cars filled with all the goods but apparently no longer tea, from China, the same dirt-cheap goods that were swamping Texas, just the way they were swamping every place else in practically the whole world. So a trip that should have taken four or at the most five hours, took what the papers were now calling -- little did they know how apt it was -- the Whistlestop-In-The-Dark Express, a full seven. The train left round midnight and pulled into the station in Dallas at seven the next morning. And just the way it had been before, when the train travelled from Louisiana to Texas, the only sound anyone on the train could hear was the voice, and the Martin 000-45, of that same singing brakeman who, because there were no stops along the way, and the train was going so slowly anyway, had nothing else he had to do. So he played his guitar and he sang.
And this is what he sang:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbzc77Tz6PA&mode=related&search=

Posted on 7:58 PM by Hugh Fitzgerald