WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Timbrel and the Lyre: Railroads, Pt. 2

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

This week, we continue our discussion of railroads by diving into the mythological, religious, and memorial role of the iron horse.

Hello everyone and welcome. I'm your host Gwen Thompson, and you're listening to The Timberl and the Liar on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Last episode, I promised you two episodes on railroads. We've already established that railroads remains day of American life for about 150 years between 1825 and 1975. We talked about how omnipresent, powerful, and exciting they were to the working-class people of 19th and 20th century America. They employed a lot of laborers, carried a lot of hobos, and cut across a lot of farms. They were an economic backbone. This time I want to talk about railroads again in a less tangible but just as important way. Maybe you've heard of Helios, the god of the sun in Greek mythology. You probably have heard of Apollo, the Roman god, who absorbed a lot of the Greek minor deities, and thus took on Helios' job, driving the chariot of the sun across the sky every day from east to

West. Helios is supposed to be all-seeing, and often gives the other gods information on each other. Because he has such clear vision, ancient Greeks often swore oaths by him. Swearing on Helios meant submitting to inspection by an all-seeing eye, and he was constant. Even if everything else collapsed, the sun would still rise and set every day. Now, what does that have to do with railroads? Well, I think you've probably heard this song before. It turns out of trying, but the train keeps rolling around the bend. And I ain't seen the sunshine since I'd almost when I'm stuck in fulls in prison. And time keeps dragging, but a train keeps rolling.

It turns out that Johnny Cash didn't write the first song about a prisoner listening to a train that's freer than he is. Listen to Midnight Special, a folk song that originated. in the Deep South Jim Crow era prisons. Oh, shining light is on me. Now the Midnight Special might have been the Golden Gate Limited that left Houston, Texas at midnight and ran to San Francisco, or it might have been the 1205 a.m. train between Jackson, Mississippi, and Parchman itself. Whichever it was, the train tracks were built at such an angle

that the light would beam in on the prisoners of Parchman Farm through the bars of their windows. According to one story, the inmates had a superstition that the person the light shone on next, when the whistleblower, would be the next one free. But even if that story isn't true, and even if the train doesn't explicitly represent freedom, it is still comforting, and you still crave the train's light. Imagine being a prisoner locked in the hellhole on the brassus, as it was called, without contact with your family, without any judge who will hear your appeal,

without any way to beg, bargain, or buy your way out of invisible captivity. The only light that shines on and sees your pain seems to be the midnight special. Like Helios, it roars past at the same time every night, dependable and steady, and it may not be able to do anything to help you, but it doesn't hurt you, and that's something. It sees you. While the railroad still sees you, while the iron horse that connects the two ends of the continent together, and travels through every city and the nation still sees you, you are not entirely forgotten. You may be dead, but you aren't buried yet. The midnight special shines its ever-loving light on captives, even when Helios's son cannot, and it sees all the injustice is done to you.

It connects you to the outside world to be seen by the same being that sees just about every other person in America. There are other songs that follow this theme, like this one, called Adieu to the Stone Walls. I don't have a recording, but it goes like this. A due to the stone walls, the prisoner's side. going to leave you done made up my mind. I'm now going to leave you further westward to stroll. I'll ride them long red balls wherever they roll. The red balls being a train. That's partly just a prisoner's desire for freedom, the natural longing of a pinned up man to wander. But it also shows you how the prisoners associated trains with freedom, whether because they had

ridden them before as tramps and hobos, or because the railroads like the sun, smiled on all of humanity and unified it with its gaze. Or you might have a song like this one, Diamond Joe. Diamond Joe, you better come getting me. Diamond Joe, you better come getting me. Diamond Joe, you better come getting me. Diamond Joe. Its meaning has been the subject of many debates,

and there are a lot of potential interpretations, and a lot of versions. But the one that I like is that it refers to a train that ran through either Arkansas or Texas, after about 1875. The singer is pleading for a train, maybe one from her hometown, to carry her away.

There's another mythological element to the railroads that we haven't discussed yet, and that's how they relate to death. When President William McKinley was assassinated on September 1901 in Buffalo, New York, his body was carried by train from Buffalo to Washington, D.C., and then on to his hometown of Canton, Ohio.

as Alan and John Lomax described this ballad. When McKinley was dead and Roosevelt was in the White House drinking from the silver cup, the people thought the matter over slowly and made up a song to mourn McKinley's death. When the song was done, it did not speak of the crowds at his beer, the flags at half-mast or of thunderous salutes to symbolize their sorrow, but instead put the Cannonball Express on the road from Buffalo to Washington, tearing through Maine, screaming out the sad news to America, with its shrill whistle, snorting its sympathy and its steam valves.

That's White House Blues. Just like the sun god, high above the human sphere is the perfect character to observe and report on the events of the world, a train is the perfect messenger. It travels across the country bearing the news. It's also the perfect memorial, because as Casey Jones showed us, engineers will die before they'll run late. So, railroads are stable. You set your watch by them. The last two things in the universe to go, as people in this time period would probably have told you, will be the railroads in the sun.

McKinley's funeral train will mourn for him every day for as long as the railroad shall live. John Henry, the steel-driving man who triumphed over the steam drill, to become probably the best-known American folk legend also gets this treatment. He dies carving a railroad tunnel and is buried by the railroad where every train that rolls past salutes him. Or again,

proud of mourners at the church house, the section of the hands laid him in the sand. Trains go by on the rails John Henry laid. They slow down and take off the hats the men do. When they come to the place where John Henry's laying, rest in his back. Some of them say, morning steel driver, you show was a hammer-swinger.

Then they go on by, picking up a little speed. Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack. Or again it clack. Take it in a clock. Down the lies of steel driving man, oh Lord. John the lies a steel driving man. Or again.

Other people took John Henry to the White House, and they buried him in the sand. Heavy locomotive come roaring by, says, there lies a steel driving man, Lord God. Yes, there lies a steel driving man. Yes, there lies a steel driving man. Whoee. There lies a steel driving man.

Because the railroad is so connected to the wide world, being saluted by a train is as good as an international day of morning. It means eternal remembrance. It means that as the hobos and the businessmen and the tourists and the brakemen drive past about their work every day, they will remember John Henry for as long as commerce continues. I can't find an authentic folk song about Abraham Lincoln's funeral train, which traveled over 1,600 miles to carry his body from Washington, D.C. to Springfield, Illinois. But, Miller Lampel, a screenwriter and singer who associated with folk giants like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and liked to adapt their songs, wrote a ballad about it, so long it has to be

sung in multiple parts. Probably thanks to all the quality folklore he absorbed, Lampel's song is in keeping with folk tradition. It lists all of the stops that the funeral train made and describes how, at each of them, Lincoln isn't in his coffin. He's joking with his friends, giving a speech, comforting a wounded soldier, or storing up sawdust on a square dance floor. You can't keep Lincoln in his coffin. Okay, the story is in folk tradition. The rhymes, meter, and performance clearly are not.

But the train motif was beautifully and faithfully incorporated. Like a railroad the song promises, Lincoln's legacy will last a million years. And because railroads are this great, connecting, uniting force, being locked out from them is the ultimate curse of loneliness. That's why you hear it in so many blues songs. All round water tank, leaking in the rain. Thousand miles away from home waiting for a train. I walked up to the break mud. I asked for a line of talk.

He says if you've got money, I will see that you don't want. I haven't got a nickel, not a penny can I show. Get off, get off, you reroute bump, you slammy box cardo. Or here's another one. Blue feels a doggone blue to listen to that old smokestack. Driver's rolling on. Give me back them good old days. That same metaphysical significance is what makes the train the perfect metaphor for the human journey

through life and towards heaven. Lord, if I've got a ticket, can I ride? Lord, if I've got a ticket, can I ride right away to the heaven and morning every talk of the gospel train you want to get on a guess that's mine

stand at the station and station away the train is coming and it's never late. The railroads, powerful and all-seeing, will one day come through on a final journey and only those who have been holy and upright will be allowed on as passing. passengers. Finally, just to show you how powerful a motif this is, I want to show you a few modern examples. Here's a verse from Glorybound, an original song by the Wayland Jennings, not Wayland Jennings.

The Wayland Jennings, they're a Canadian trio. So I'm waiting for that train to come. She's coming from. When I'm bored, I won't be looking bad. The gospel train motif is common. I heard it in preschool songs as a child. And it makes perfect sense. There are innumerable country songs that start with discontented farmers' sons, wishing they could follow the railroad into a distant, exciting unknown. The first thing I remember knowing was a lonesome whistle blowing

and a youngish dream of growing up to ride. On a freight train leaving town, not knowing where I'm bound, and no one can change my mind, but Mama tried. The faraway country that the train visits is full of promise. What better promise than the hope of glory? When the train that has been shining and ever-loving and all-seeing light on the poor and heavy laden takes on the patient and holy ones as passengers to heaven.

But the train doesn't just promise adventure, as we've seen. It also unites faraway families, And even if you can't actually afford to ride home, the possibility of doing so is a sort of comfort. You hear the loss of that mourned in a modern song by Gillian Welch. A risky flows down in Dixie, down along the Dixie line. It pulled up the track. I can't hardly keep from this me. way down Dixie down along the Dixie

I wish I could show you pictures over this radio because some of you may be thinking this is exaggerated or that the whole message of this episode is just me being an academic but if you find one of those old photos from say the late 1870s Homestead Act years and you see a lonely steam engine crossing a prairie winding slowly around obstacles you can't see under the blanket of grass, visible for a whole ten minutes as it passes because of the emptiness of the territory

around you. That's when you understand. That's when you understand how the iron horse may be your only contact with outside civilization in a given week took on such phenomenal and important significance. Friends, this is our last episode for the next five or six weeks while the college is on winter break. We'll be back in mid-January. In the meantime, I wish you all a Merry Christmas. Thank you for listening to The Timberl and the Liar, and we'll meet again in the new year on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM.