The Best Train Song Ever

Reading of all the devastation and idiocy that has surrounded the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a song kept playing in the back of my head. Part of the reason this site is named the way it is relates to my love for lyrics, and music, and what they mean.¹

The song is an old song - written the year I was born, 1971, in an America that was changing in it's own ways back then. The man who wrote it was Steve Goodman, and he wrote the song on a sketchpad on an Illinois Central train - everything that is in the song is what he saw while riding the train.

Due to a lack of passengers, the train was to be decommissioned. Steve Goodman, asked to play the song to save the train, touched up his song and released it on his self-titled first album in 1971, though it is noted as having been released in 1972. A fellow you might have heard of, Arlo Guthrie (Woody Guthrie's son), listened to the song after charging Goodman a beer for the privilege. And so, Arlo Guthrie liked it and got the rights to it - releasing it on an album in 1972. An ABC News morning show took it's name from the chorus of the song - Good Morning America;

... 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...²

The cat's out of the bag. But, you see, many people who don't know the history of the song, 'City of New Orleans' only understand that the name of the train was the City of New Orleans. The train itself started making it's 16 hour runs in 1947 - a year after my father was born - between Chicago and New Orleans.

1971 marked a change in the train service - Amtrak took over, and out of all the train service that passed through Champaign, Illinois that was left - there remained the City of New Orleans and the Shawnee. The City of New Orleans was renamed as the Panama Limited for a while... but, maybe because of the popularity of Goodman's song and Guthrie's rendition, they changed the name back after a brief period. Here's a link to the route.

Trains and Evacuation

What am I getting at? Well, where were the trains for the evacuation? Were they used? I don't know, and if they weren't I wouldn't blame Amtrak too quickly. But trains... have always been the cheap mode of transport that allowed poor people to travel. While much has been said about whether or not people decided to stay despite evacuations, let's look at how attainable it was for them to evacuate instead. We can't do that on the Amtrak site right now (obviously, New Orleans service is closed), but - what was the cost to get to Memphis, Tenessee? And what's the cost of a hotel room for the night?

Let's say the train ticket was $50 - maybe low - and that the cost of a room would be at least $20 per night, if you could find a room. So figure for 3 days you spend $20 a day on food - a single person - and that you get a ticket back, if nothing happened to New Orleans. So that's another $50. That's $100 for transportation, $60+ tax for a room, and $60 for food. That's $220. And $220 is really close to what minimum wage pays for a week. So in 3 days, a minimum wage worker would spend a weeks wages... and when you're that slim on funds, what do you not pay to fund that adventure? And these figures, well... they are pretty low.

So let's say we got rid of the transportation costs. Let's call it $120. That's STILL about half of a week's wages at minimum wage.

If I were making minimum wage at a McJob in New Orleans and I got a mandatory evacuation order, I'd stick around because I just couldn't afford to.

And now maybe a few people can understand why some people chose not to leave New Orleans.

...Dealin' cards with the old men in the club car
Penny a point, ain't no one keepin' score
Won't you 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 carpet made of steam
Mothers with their babes asleep
Are rockin' to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they dream

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.

Good morning, America, how are you?
A pretty good question. I'll take a shot. America's as good as the weakest link - not the advertised America.

¹There's another reason to the name of KnowProSE.com, which holders of my business card will know - Knowledge Professional, Software Engineer. And there's another reason, related to my mother's license plate. Lesson: Never do something for just 1 reason.

²Full lyrics available here.

Image at top right courtesy of Sean McCormick, who has permitted me the right to display thumbnails of some of the images in his Digital photography portfolio.