Riding on the City of New Orleans Illinois Central, Monday morning rail Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail All along the southbound odyssey The train pulls out at Kankakee Rolls along past houses, farms and fields Passin' trains that have no name Freight yards full of old black men And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles
Good morning America, how are you? Say, 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 car Penny a point ain't no one keepin' score Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle Feel the wheels rumblin' 'neath the floor And the sons of pullman porters And the sons of engineers Ride their father's magic carpets made of steel 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 you? Say, 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 Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee Half way home, we'll be there by morning Through the Mississippi darkness Rolling 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 got the disappearing railroad blues
Good night, America, how are you? Say, 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
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Goodman Steve
The City of New Orleans lyrics © Sony/atv Tunes Llc
C.: Thanks for helping me clean up Tucker’s yard today, d.c. He said that we could still get married if I cleaned all the debris out of his yard. He read what I tied the these rocks, and he was touched.
d.: What did you drop in his yard?
C.: I dropped famous, romantic quotes from books and movies to express my feelings towards him. I even used a quote from your first book THE MAGRUDER MYSTERIES PRECISION; A CRIME OF PASSION. Here it is, “Here’s looking at, at you kid.”
d.: That wasn’t me. That’s Humphrey Bogart as Rick in Casa Blanca.
C.: Oh, this must be it then, “Of all the gin joints in all the world, why did she have to walk into mine?”
d.: Again, Bogart as Rick in Casa Blanca
C.: This must be it then, “If you don’t get on that plane, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.”
d.: Again, Bogart as Rick in Casa Blanca.
C.: “Because, Helen (but I changed the name to Tucker, because his name is Tucker, not Helen), we’re all going to die, it’s just a matter of when. We’re all terminal in a sense. That’s the thing about life, nobody gets out of it alive”?
d.: Yes, that’s the chapter where Helen asks John why he would agree to marry her when he knows she only has six months or less to live. The one before that is when Ilsa finds out her husband is still alive, but she wants to stay with Rick. He tells her that she must get on the plane or regret it for the rest of her life.
C.: And then he goes back to his bar and says, “Play it again, Sam.”
d.: No, Bogart never actually utters that line. I’ve seen the movie three times. It’s one of my all-time favorites. The correct line is, "Play it, Sam.”
Anyway, so you and Tucker are getting married behind the VFW in Guy, Texas in the month of June?
C.: No, I called and cancelled that venue when my ex-husband called.
d.: Did he want to get back together?
C.: Hardly. He offered to give me away. He’s excited that I’m marrying a rich cat, so he wants to walk me down the isle. I was going to ask you and Dad to do that, one on each side, but Tom insisted that he do it. Since Tucker is from Texas and my original Earth home is on the East Coast, we compromised on New Orleans. Tom is coming in by train on The City of New Orleans.
d.: That train was destroyed in a wreck with several vehicles in the last century, and it ran a north to south route from Chicago, Illinois to New Orleans, Louisiana when it was running. That's nowhere near the East Coast…
C.: d.c., this isn’t real. There’s no such thing as a talking cat, much less one that’s a multimillionaire. And cats don’t really mate for life. The pretenses for this blog are imaginary. Tom can come on any train or plane I want him to.
d.: It’s good that y’all can still be so friendly.
C.: It’s not that, when Tom heard that I was getting remarried, he was relieved, because he won’t need to pay kitten support anymore.
d.: Cal.E., if your kittens were human, they would be forty-two. That hardly seems fair that Tom would still need to pay kitten support for them.
C.: But they’re not human, and they’re only six. The law calls for kitten support to be paid until the age of eighteen. Anyway, whoever said life was fair? What do you always say, “The fair involves a Ferris Wheel and comes to town in the early fall”?
d.: True, if life were fair, everyone would have enough to eat, a place to sleep, and there would be no war or senseless killings.
C.: And no kids or animals would be left outside chilling or get cancer. d.c. why do innocent children and animals get cancer?
d.: I don't know the answer. But, if life were fair, there would be no need for children’s hospitals or vetinary clinics.
C.: And you and I wouldn’t have jobs, because there would be no need for kennels of any kind. And there would be no inmates who turned into cynics.
d.: It looks like we’re out of time...
C.: For today, so join us tomorrow for another episode of Cal.E.’s Korner.