Cal.E.s Korner

Well, you wake up in the mornin'

You hear the work bell ring

And they march you to the table

You see the same old thing

Ain't no food upon the table

And no pork up in the pan

But you better not complain, boy

You get in trouble with the man

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me

Let the Midnight Special shine a ever lovin' light on me

Yonder come Miss Rosie

How in the world did you know?

By the way she wears her apron

And the clothes she wore

Umbrella on her shoulder

Piece of paper in her hand

She come to see the gov'nor

She want to free her man, oh

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me

Let the Midnight Special shine a ever lovin' light on me

If you're ever in Houston

Well, you better do right

You better not gamble

There, you better not fight, at all

Or the sheriff will grab ya

And the boys will bring you down

The next thing you know, boy

Whoa, you're prison bound

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me

Let the Midnight Special shine a ever lovin' light on me

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me

Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me

Let the Midnight Special shine a ever lovin' light on me

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Bert Berns

The Midnight Special lyrics © Sony/atv Songs Llc, Arvee Music, Jondora Music, Sloopy Ii Music Inc.

C.: Hey, d.c., I need your help.

d.: We don’t usually work together anymore, so I’ll be glad to help out a fellow worker.

C.: Thank you, d.c. I just need a couple of copies of my timesheet, if you don’t mind.

d.: Y’all don’t use a computerized system yet?

C.: The officers do, but my union, WACO, filed a lawsuit so that the members of the Working (pets of) America Consolidated Organization don’t need to do that. We just fill out a timesheet each week. I haven’t been working lately, so it took me a while to fill mine out.

d.: I see. Why don't you WACOs want to use a computer system, Cal.E.?

C.: Because we don’t have opposable thumbs, d.c.

d.: I use a computer all day long, and I don’t really use my thumbs that much when I’m typing–

C.: WE DON’T HAVE OPPOSABLE THUMBS, OKAY!

d.: You don’t know how to access the program to record your work time, do you?

C.: I haven’t a clue. And, even if I did, they change it every week.

d.: It’s more like every three days now. Anyway, let me just put my pin number into the copier and I’ll have those copies for you shortly. Let’s see, capitlize the first, third, seventh, eleventh, fifteenth and twenty-first characters, and, voila. Here's the copies you wanted.

C.: Why do you have such a long, complicated password, d.c.?

d.: Because I cannot use any of the last 432 passwords I’ve used, and I’ve been working here for more than ten years.  I must also change my password every three weeks to avoid piracy of privileged information.

C.: Can’t you just change one character in your password every three weeks?

d.: No, if more than two characters are like any of my last 432 passwords, the computer rejects it. Also, I cannot write it down under penalty of law, so I must reproduce all the characters in the password from memory. That’s okay, because I use the same password for my computer, the copier machine, the vending machine, to open the restroom-

C.: So, you can remember a password that’s twenty-one characters long, but you have trouble remembering what street you live on?

d.: What’s your point…..

C.: Cal.E.

d.: I would have remembered your name eventually. Anyway, I use Albert Einstein’s theory. He believed that one doesn’t need to memorize something s/he can look up. Legend has it that he didn’t even have his own phone number memorized.

C.: And, in his time, it was probably only four digits long. Anway, can you tell me about the song whose lyrics you posted at the beginning of this blog?

d.: Well, that song was written by Led Belly. There are a few different legends about why and where he wrote it, but the one that makes the most sense to me is that he wrote it while in Central Prison in Sugar Land. A train track is located about one-half mile from that prison. The legend was that if the midnight train’s light shone on a prisoner, that prisoner would be released shortly afterward. That legend gave him an idea for a song.

C.: What are the other legends, d.c.?

d.: Well, Led Belly was a notorious criminal who had been in prisons in three states:  Texas, Louisiana, and Mississipp. Parchman Prison in Mississippi also is in close vicinity to a railroad track, and I saw a documentary that claimed he wrote that song while incarcerated at Parchman Penetentiary. The Anagola Penitentary in Louisianna, I think, claims the same thing. I’ve never actuallly seen Angola, but I have seen Parchman, and it does make sense. I believe he started writing the song in Parchman, continued writing it in Angola, and finished it in Central, but I still believe that the lyrics are most consistent with the claim that he wrote most of the song in Central Prison. Maybe that’s because I’ve lived near Old Sugar Land for a while, and the landmarks in the song make the most sense to me. That may be because I’m most familiar with them. I’ve lived in close proximity to that (now closed) prison for thirty-five years.

C.:  Thirty-five human years?! Let’s see, in cat years, that would be–

d.:   That’s all the time we have for today, folks. Please join us tomorrow for another episode of Cal.E.’s Korner.