The word for this Monday is Track. You can track someone, be on the right track, play a track of music or keep track. Today I’ll be riding the rails.
First stop on the way, a special track of the first record ever bought with my own money: The Wayward Wind by Gogi Grant.
In a lonely shack by a railroad track
He spent his younger days
And I guess the sound of the outward bound
Made him a slave to his wandrin’ ways
Add to this the fact that one of my favorite names for a girl comes from a song with a train in the lyrics, “And you see Laura on a train that is passing through. She gave your very first kiss to you, but she’s only a dream”.
Now this quite naturally made me think about train songs: Trains or tracks in the title, Name of a particular train, and events happening on a train. So I got out a paper and pen and by the time I got to the 50th song off the top of my head, it occurred to me (I can be a little slow at times) that song writers and singers from every imaginable genre like to write or sing about trains and you can make the instruments do such nice whiney sounds for the train whistle heard from the tracks when the train goes by.
Then there is the ongoing fascination with history and the picture at the top of the page. Manifest Destiny demanded that the United States span from Atlantic to Pacific. That required a way to conveniently get from point A to point be and the tracks from those two locations met at Promontory Summit (not Peak) on May 10, 1969 where A ceremonial golden spike was driven into the connection by Leland Stanford (head of the Central Pacific Railroad) and Thomas Durant (Vice President of the Union Pacific Railroad). Both men famously missed the spike with their first hammer swings.
And we finish with a train playlist.
City of New Orleans – The Highway Men
Wabash Cannonball – Boxcar Willie
Take the A Train – Duke Ellington & Ella Fitzgerald
Last Train To Clarksville – The Monkees
Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe – Judy Garland
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