Had a nice glimpse of Red-Tail Hawk, the markings clear in the evening twilight. Then, a sign through one town, I realized it was a siding, no longer used, town named Clifton. Steve Fronholz’s epic about Texas, central northeast Texas and history. I can’t shake that one song. There’s an elegiac tone to the trilogy, too, and yet, to hear Steven himself sing it, something like 30 years after I heard it the first time, on Texas radio, he imparts a slightly more upbeat tone than the current – and popular – version. Still, it’s powerful music if the words, the tone, and the sentiments travel with me, up and down the train track. The Missouri-Pacific line joins with the old Santa Fe line in Temple. Useless trivia, the Santa Fe (rail) yard in Temple is the larges Santa Fe yard west of Chicago. But it’s when the route cuts across the Brazos River, Bosque County, that’s when song’s whole cycle makes sense. The words:
Well, the last time I remember that train stopping at the depot
Was when me and my Aunt Veta came riding back from Waco.
I remember I was wearing my long pants and we was sharing
Conversation with a man who sold ball-point pens and paper.
And the train stopped once in Clifton where my Aunt bought me some ice cream.
And my Mom was there to meet us when the train pulled into Kopperl.
But now kids at night break window lights
And the sound of trains only remains
In the memory of the ones like me.
Who have turned their backs on the splintered cracks
In the walls that stand on the railroad land
Where we used to play and then run away
From the depot man.
I remember me and brother used to run down to the depot
Just to listen to the whistle when the train pulled into Kopperl.
And the engine big and shiny, black as coal that fed the fire
And the engineer would smile and say, “Howdy, how ya fellows?”
And the people by the windows playing cards and reading papers
Looked as far away to us as next summer’s school vacation.
©1969, MCA Music Publishing (ASCAP)
I was hoping for a better shot but we have to take what we can get these days. It was a Santa Fe – Burlington Northern engine against a backdrop of Dallas concrete, clay and glass skyscrapers.
Concrete, clay and glass? Know that musical allusion?
“So home and to bed.”
