I was standing in Walgreens, holding a canister of Quaker Oats, along with vitamin-enriched Diet Coke plus, which is going to save me from getting the swine flu, I'm sure of it. City of New Orleans came on over the piped music system, and everything seemed to change. I felt lighter.
Maybe it was the three hours of sleep I'd gotten the night before, or the mania of stuff better left to paper, but the line, "Good Morning, America, How Are Ya?" in the song's refrain made me kind of giddy.
I've always liked this song. Its lyrics give me the goosebumps. I just learned via Wikpipedia- where else does one learn things at 2:25 a.m.?- that City of New Orleans was musician Steve Goodman's big break.
The song, which Arlo Guthrie sang, propelling Goodman's words to the top of the charts, enabled Goodman to write full-time, and pursue his dream, even as he succumbed to an early death from leukemia at age 36.
Per Wikipedia, "Goodman never felt that he was living on anything other than borrowed time, and some critics, listeners and friends have said that his music reflects this sentiment. His wife Nancy, writing in the liner notes to the posthumous collection No Big Surprise, characterized him this way:
Basically, Steve was exactly who he appeared to be: an ambitious, well-adjusted man from a loving, middle-class Jewish home in the Chicago suburbs, whose life and talent were directed by the physical pain and time constraints of a fatal disease which he kept at bay, at times, seemingly by willpower alone . . . Steve wanted to live as normal a life as possible, only he had to live it as fast as he could . . . He extracted meaning from the mundane."
"The City Of New Orleans"
(As recorded by Arlo Guthrie)
STEVE GOODMAN
Ridin' on The City of New Orleans
Illinois Central, and Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders
Three conductors, twenty-five sacks of mail.
All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out of Kankakee
And rolls along past houses, farms and fields
Passin' trains that have no name
And freightyards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.
Good morning America, how are ya?
Said don't you know me, I'm your native son?
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.
Dealin' card games with the old men in the club cars
Penny a point, ain't no one keepin' score?
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
Feel the wheels grumblin' 'neath the floor.
And the sons of Pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their father's magic carpets made of steam
Mothers with their babes asleep
Are rockin' to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel.
Good morning America, how are ya?
Said don't you know me, I'm your native son?
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.
Nighttime on The City of New Orleans
Changin' cars in Memphis, Tennessee
Halfway home, and we'll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness rollin' down to the sea.
But all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rail still ain't heard the news
The conductor sings his songs again
The passengers will please refrain
This train's got the disappearin' railroad blues.
Good night America, how are ya?
Said don't you know me, I'm your native son?
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.
(c) Copyright 1970 by Steve Goodman. All rights assigned 1971 Kama Rippa Music, Inc./
Turnpike Tom. All rights administered by Kama Rippa Music, Inc., 810 Seventh Ave.,
New York, New York 10019.
- SONG HITS, Summer 1974.
