Many of you know about my car, The Blue Ox, a blue Honda CRV, and some of you have met her personally on my cross-country roadtrip a couple years ago. Well this weekend the Blue Ox, or “Babe,” reached a milestone - 100,000 miles! It’s logged a lot of miles and hours, seen most of the states, made a nice bed for me sometimes, been to both oceans, all three countries in North America, and has been a real part of my life for a few years now. And on Friday night it hit 100,000. In Babe’s honor I threw together a slideshow of pictures of the car around the country, mostly pics from my roadtrip. Enjoy. Here’s to another 100,000! Maybe I’ll someday be able to rig her up for some alternative fuel choices and keep her chugging past the Fossil Fuel Age.

Looking at these slideshow pictures it’s kinda hard to imagine now I went to all these places. The memories had started to go a bit foggy. Flipping through them has given me a pleasant jumpstart. More than anything, looking at all those pics makes me want to do it again.

Not only did both parts of the equation come to pass, they had a wonderful confluence Tuesday night. Mr Dylan wrapped up his first set and he and the band went backstage to do whatever it is bands do while the crowd is left clapping and hollering. This was just before 10PM, and for the most part the crowd was in the dark about the election results, although throughout the auditorium you could see cellphones clicking on here and there, people gathering updates.

Dylan and the band (um, did I mention I was at a Bob Dylan show? My first ever? Yeah, that’s where I was.) came out from backstage and toook up their positions. Bobby began mumbling something into the microphone. This was a problem the whole night. The man’s voice is completely shot. It’s one thing to say you can’t hear what the singer’s singing; Bob was nearly indecipherable on every song. Anyway, so he’s saying something into the microphone. People around me and down below the balcony are yelling and cheering. How can they understand him? I thought. It did eventually dawn on me, though, that while backstage Dylan had found out that Barack Obama had secured the presidency. And he was telling us! Yes friends, I received my election results from Bob #^$%ing Dylan! Then he played “Like a Rolling Stone.” I mean seriously, does it get any better than that? Hint: the answer is “no.”

He ended the night with a fitting and beautiful (despite the voice) “Blowin in the Wind” and the crowd filed into the lobby and out into the unseasonably warm night on the University of MN campus. As we descended the stairs and moved through the lobby, the projection screen playing CNN and the shouts from outside confirmed it: “O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!” He had won. He did it. We did it. I was struck with a weird feeling. It was joy. But it was more than that: it was pride. In America. In Americans. This was a feeling heretofore unfamiliar to me. Outside an instant rally had formed. Not one concertgoer had left. Drum circles and swirling bodies. Chants. “Yes we did!” “O-ba-ma!” Yelling and laughing and unbridled happiness. Something I have simply and honestly never seen before in my life.

Of course Dylan, as always, said it best. “The times, they are a-changin.” He sang this in concert that night and recieved a standing ovation, and I nearly cried. That song had never seemed so touching, nor seemed so appropriate, as it did the night Obama became president.

Baracking the vote + Bob Dylan concert tonight = Best election day ever!

In the morning, the time of hope,
the sky will be blue like fresh steel,
or woolen grey,

it might rain, or it might be hot
like always, or you might see your
footprints in the frost. The sky, the world, won’t care,
and the sky, the world, won’t know.

The world. It needs help sometimes.
A push, a kickstart, a breath, from you.
So breathe. Be life.

In the evening, before the night,
after the work of the day is done -

the sky will be blue like fresh steel,
or woolen grey,

and you might be confused
because it will look like dawn again.

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 names,
Freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.

Good morning America how are you?
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?
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.
And all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain’t heard the news.
The conductor sings his song again,
The passengers will please refrain
This train’s got the disappearing railroad blues.

Good night, America, how are you?
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.

* * *

This song calls back to a very early time in my life, associated with hazy memories of my living room and Arlo Guthrie’s record on the turntable. That was back when our house still had carpet and I remember laying there in front of the stereo and hearing this song. Hearing it quite a lot, as my dad is a big Arlo fan. I don’t know if he listens to Arlo much anymore, but I seem to remember him always being on when I was kid. Of course memories are faulty as a rule so I could be making all of this up. Either way, this song has a special place in my heart, and it has never grown old to these ears. I love it as much today as I did back then.

A wonderful mix of train songs by my friend Lindsey had another version of this song by John Denver, a version I’d never heard. This version of the song, a live version of the song, starts with a quick story about the recording of the song, with  J-Denny mentioning how Arlo had basically stolen the song out from under him. “Really ticked me off,” John says, although I find it hard to believe anything really ticked him off. The song and the story kickstarted the idea for this post in my mind, because the song does have some history behind it that I bet many don’t know. Plus, it’s just a beautiful song and sounds terrific in just about anybody’s hands.

Let’s talk lyrics first. The song is fairly straightforward here; it’s a story song about travel on the City of New Orleans from Chicago to New Orleans. The train is one of the old Illinois Central lines, running the “southbound odyssey” from Chicago, to Memphis, to Jackson MO, and finally to New Orleans. And it’s still active today, though operated by Amtrak, as all passenger rails are in the US. The song is a fairly sentimental look at the transition of the US from a rails country to a car country, and the transition from private rail companies to the single quasi-government one, Amtrak, which happened in 1970-71, the same time this song was written and recorded. Hence the line, “this train’s got the disappearing railroad blues,” a line I took for the longest time to be some sort of ghost-train reference.”The steel rails still ain’t heard the news.”

The lyrics are filled with lively characters, and the writer seems to be struck by a certain feeling that many people, especially writer types, feel when they ride long-distance trains, which is a sort of instant nostalgia. Every experince is heightened, every smell and touch and sight evocative of a past that is not quite passed yet, but not quite present anymore.

And there is that magnificent chorus. “Good morning America, how are you? 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.” Honestly, this chorus ensures this song will be remembered as one of the finest in all of American music.

Pretty great for Arlo Guthrie, right? Maybe, but not entirely. You see, he didn’t write the song. Arlo did not write “The City of New Orleans.” The song was written by Steve Goodman, a Chicago singer/songwriter who went through most of his career as an unknown, what they’d call a “songwriter’s songwriter” - that is, a writer well-respected by other writers, but one who received little attention for his own work. He did finally receive a Grammy nod in 1985 as the songwriter behind Willie Nelson’s hit version of the song - but he had  died from leukemia months earlier. Sometimes you just can’t catch a break. If you can, do try to find some of Steve’s work, as he was an excellent singer and songwriter. And if you’ve ever been at Wrigley Field for a Cubs victory, you’ve heard Steve sing before; he wrote the unofficial Cubs anthem, “Go Cubs Go,” which they often play in the stadium.

As memorable as Arlo’s version is, there are other versions as well, many of them equal to, if not actually better than Arlo’s version. I’ve already mentioned two: John Denver’s and Willie Nelson’s, but there are more. There is of course Steve Goodman’s original, a stripped-down folksy romp, and versions by Johnny Cash, Judy Collins, and - my personal favorite - a duet version of the song with John Prine (a close friend of Goodman’s) and Randy Scruggs, featuring Scruggs’ awesome guitar work.

Musically the song and all its incarnations follow the same muse, each version incorporating a bright sound and a bouncy steam engine beat. All have a distinct country flavor, incorporating steel guitar, mandolins, and an abundance of pickin’ guitars. The Guthrie version has that wonderful piano and accordion combo, and the Scruggs/Prine version has some incredible pedal steel, not to mention great solos by Scruggs and Roger McGuinn (of The Byrds).

Well, I believe that’s enough of me talking about this song and all its wonderful cover versions. I bet you wanna listen to some of these! You can download a ZIP file here with all of the versions mentioned above.

Keen, fitful gusts are whisp’ring here and there
Among the bushes half leafless, and dry;
The stars look very cold about the sky,
And I have many miles on foot to fare.
Yet feel I little of the cool bleak air,
Or of the dead leaves rustling drearily,
Or of those silver lamps that burn on high,
Or of the distance from home’s pleasant lair:
For I am brimfull of the friendliness
That in a little cottage I have found;
Of fair-hair’d Milton’s eloquent distress,
And all his love for gentle Lycid drown’d;
Of lovely Laura in her light green dress,
And faithful Petrarch gloriously crown’d.

As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-knot of straw.

Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks
Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent
Until your fingers moved somnambulant:
I tell and finger it like braille,
Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable,

And if I spy into its golden loops
I see us walk between the railway slopes
Into an evening of long grass and midges,
Blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs in hedges,
An auction notice on an outhouse wall–
You with a harvest bow in your lapel,

Me with the fishing rod, already homesick
For the big lift of these evenings, as your stick
Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes
Beats out of time, and beats, but flushes
Nothing: that original townland
Still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand.

The end of art is peace
Could be the motto of this frail device
That I have pinned up on our deal dresser–
Like a drawn snare
Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn
Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.

A soft whoosh, the sunset blaze
of straw on blackened stubble,
a thatch-deep, freshening
barbarous crimson burn -

I rode down England
as they fired the crop
that was the leavings of a crop,
the smashed tow-coloured barley,

down from Ely’s Lady Chapel,
the sweet tenor Latin
forever banished,
the sumptuous windows

threshed clear by Thomas Cromwell.
Which circle does he tread,
scalding on cobbles,
each one a broken statue’s head?

After midnight, after summer,
to walk in a sparking field,
to smell dew and ashes
and start Will Brangwen’s ghost

from the hot soot -
a breaking sheaf of light,
abroad in the hiss
and clash of stooking.

This amber light floating strangely upward in the woods - nearly
dark now with a warlock hooting through the tips of trees.

If I were to be murdered here as an Enemy of the State you would
have to bury me under the woodpile for want of a shovel.

She was near the window and beyond her breasts I could see
the burdock, nettles, goldenrod in a field beyond the orchard.

We’ll have to abandon this place and live out of the car again.
You’ll nurse the baby while we’re stuck in the snow out of gas.

The ice had entered the wood. It was twenty below and the beech
easy to split. I lived in a lean-to covered with deerskins.

I have been emptied of poison and returned home dried
out with a dirty bill of health and screaming for new wine.

It is an hour before dawn and even prophets sleep
on their beds of gravel. Dreams of fish and hemlines.

The scissors move across the paper and through
the beard. It doesn’t know enough or when to stop.

The bear tires of his bicycle but he’s strapped on
with straps of silver and gold straps inlaid with scalps.

We are imperturbable as deer whose ancestors saw the last
man and passed on the sweet knowledge by shitting on graves.

Let us arrange to meet sometime in transit, we’ll all take
the same train perhaps, Cendrars’ Express or the defunct Wabash.

Her swoon was officially interminable with unconvincing
geometric convulsions, no doubt her civic theater experience.

- - -

Jim Harrison is a strange man and these are probably his strangest set of poems, yet I’m drawn to them.