“Waitin’ For A Train”
Jimmie Rodgers
1928 — Same Train, Different Time
((( ! )))
And now let me tell you something, something that I’ve been saving for the end. “This is how my first ride went on a freight, and remember, I wasn’t even stoned.
Get this, I started in Jasper, high in the Canadian Rockies. I had to wait around all day because a derailment to the west held up traffic. Finally, a train left around midnight and I climbed in an empty cattle car. Cow shit was all over the floor, and the walls were covered with a layer of quicklime.
We rode north, and the mountains all around glowed eerie and ghost-like in the cold pale-white light of a three-quarter moon. We rolled along the Athabaska River, as the moonlight through the pines shimmered and danced along its surface, as the smoke from the engine glowed blue.
And then, along the whole northern horizon, the sky began exploding in flashes of blue and orange. It was the northern lights.
Huge glowing clouds swirled and flowed among the explosions, and incredible beams of light shot out from the clouds through the sky.
The clouds kept growing, and were getting brighter, swirling and flashing, building and building. They formed a glowing, bubbling arc across the sky, like the storms shooting up from the sun’s surface. And it was still building, and the clouds started turning brilliant shades of orange and yellow, and red and blue.
Explosions were flashing everywhere as if it were going to swallow the whole universe. And suddenly, it just disappeared, leaving me buzzing and humming, just standing there breathlessly.
I was cold and alone and doing a strange thing I had never done before, traveling somewhere I’d never been.
But that night, that first night on a freight, was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever experienced.
May your first boxcar be that strange and beautiful.
tuesday
September 18, 1974
vol. 70 no. 112
Three Days In Gainesville
tuesday
April 11, 1978
vol. 70 no. 112
monday
November 26, 1979
vol. 72 no. 43
friday
October 24, 1980
vol. 74 no. 25
Looking Into The ’80s
THE TROUBLE WITH OIL
BOMB IRAN (DOWNTOWN CONFRONTATION)
REAGAN LANDSLIDE
REAGAN SHOT
NO NUKES (D.C./NYC)
’70s (RAW)
alligator