DAY 51.3 | Your native son

 

The City of New Orleans
Song by Arlo Guthrie

Riding on the City of New Orleans
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders
Three conductors and twenty-four sacks of mail

All along the southbound odyssey
The train rolls out of Kankakee
And moves along past houses, farms and fields
Passin' trains that have no name
And switchyards full of old black men
And graveyards full of 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' cards with an old man on the club car
Penny a point and nobody's keepin' score
Now pass the paper bag that holds a bottle
And feel the wheels rumblin' 'neath the floor

And the sons of Pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their daddy's magic carpet made of steel
Mothers with their babes asleep
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

And all the towns and the 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 to disappear in 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