Train Song

Every morning around 10:30 AM the Manhattan-bound Amtrak train shoots thru the underpass up in Inwood Hill Park. Often when I'm out hiking I'll hang out on the bridge to watch for the engine coming. Sometimes the driver will blow the horn for me and sometimes not.

Ever since I was a little kid I've liked trains. For someone who hates to travel, the train is the only way I like to go. For years I took the long trip to NYC from Syracuse and later the shorter one from Hartford. These days it's Metro North to New Haven to visit my friends in Connecticut.

When we were young, our parents would sometimes take us on a Sunday to Lyons, New York where several rail lines converged. We would meet our cousins and spend some time watching the trains come and go. My uncle would put pennies on the track and after a train passed we would try to find the melted blobs of copper. This picture is my favorite of us with the Huber cousins; standing are the tough guys, my brother Jeff (holding Butch) and cousin Robert; my dreamy cousin Sharon passed away a few years ago after a very long illness. I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go but looking impatient. In the front are my big-hearted cousin Paul and my wonderful sister Linda who - if she reads this - is hopefully planning a train trip to NYC this winter.

My parents were so much fun when we were young; here's my Dad with Linda & me having some cotton candy. As they got older, my parents lapsed into bickering which made visiting them something of a chore.  Once when Kenny & I drove all the way up there from Hartford to see them we went to the house for breakfast and they spent the whole time fussing about this and that with one another while Kenny & I wished we were back in our own kitchen. I guess couples get that way after many years together.

Here's my friend Ann(e) and me singing on the front steps of my sister's farmhouse. We might have been singing 'Freight Train' or one of the dozens of other country/folk songs in our repertoire. We honed our harmonies in Houston in 1973 where we would sit in a circle every night with Helen, Larry, Meme, her husband Dan and their little daughter Joni and whoever else had dropped in singing song after song until the wee hours, passing a joint and a bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill. Then we would put Jackson Browne's new LP SATURATE BEFORE USING on the turntable on endless repeat and fall asleep. It was still playing in the morning when we would get up all groggy and watch Larry make banana pancakes. He used to put club soda in the batter to make them ultra-light.

Dan and I had our secretive homosexuality in common; he married Meme and they had a baby in his hopeless attempt to play it straight. He was cute. Ann(e) told me she thought he was gay {at that point in time, it was not something people talked about casually} and once I woke up in the middle of the night to find him standing over me. But nothing happened; I still wasn't quite ready and it wasn't til Autumn of '73 that I finally made the big leap by which time I was back in NYC. A couple years later Dan committed suicide.

Ann(e) was the person who changed my life completely and forever. She didn't really DO anything, she just WAS. She drew me out of my shell with her quirky, self-deprecating humor and showed me it was OK to be different. From her example I found the courage to be myself - which may not sound like a big deal except if you had been the 'only' very closeted gay guy feeling utterly at odds with the world, knowing from age ten that you were radically unlike everyone else and growing up in an ultra-conservative town of 500 well-meaning but terribly straight-laced souls you would understand what meeting someone like Ann(e) was like. She had such an angelic voice - she probably still does.

One of the songs we loved to sing was the greatest train song of all time, Steve Goodman's CITY OF NEW ORLEANS (Note: the YouTube video of Goodman performing his hit tune has sadly been removed) which is a bittersweet anthem to the passing of the heyday of the railroad. Goodman died of leukemia at the tragically young age of 36 in 1984 leaving this timeless song for us. He was a huge fan of the Chicago Cubs and his ashes are buried under home plate at Wrigley Field.

The other train song that's stayed with me over the years is Janis Joplin's ME & BOBBY MCGEE. I loved Janis. Speaking of being yourself...

I'm looking forward to my next train ride to New Haven - on our way up to Jacob's Pillow.

Timely update for this family-oriented post: my sister just sent me this photo from her husband Dan's recent birthday party. She and Dan were high school sweethearts who got married within a week of graduating college. They have two sons, Brian and Steven (standing in the photo) and six 'grands': Beau, Gavin, Connor, Kate, Emma and Margaret. Dan (half-hidden, holding Gavin) and my sister live in a sort of rustic-modern house near the tiny town of Hannibal, NY where we all grew up. They run a golf course which they built themselves on a beautiful piece of farmland.   

Comments

[Clay Eals]

Good to see your post about "City of New Orleans" and Steve Goodman. He often doesn't get his due. Thought you might be interested in an eight-year project of mine that has come to fruition -- an 800-page biography of Goodman published in May, "Steve Goodman: Facing the Music." The book delves deeply into the background of CONO and the other 100 or so songs that Goodman wrote. Please check my Internet site below for more info. Just trying to spread the word. Feel free to do the same!

Clay Eals
1728 California Ave. S.W. #301
Seattle, WA 98116-1958

(206) 935-7515
(206) 484-8008
ceals@comcast.net
http://www.clayeals.com

[Philip]

Thank you for the link, and good luck with your book. The saddest thing about creative artists who pass away too early is that you always wonder what they might have done had they lived a normal life span. Instead of leaving us with a hundred songs, Steve Goodman should still be alive and writing today.

[Chisel]

Philip,

What a great song. I love it too!

I don't know what made your parents bicker so as they grew older. They lapsed into a bad habit, and bad habits become difficult to break.

Thanks for sharing.

[tonya]

Aw, this is all so sweet. Whatever happened to Ann(e)? That's so sad about Dan. I love trains too -- especially after 9/11 when I was afraid to fly, I took trains everywhere. It's so peaceful to just sit and look out the window and think... I can't wait to hear about your Jacob's Pillow trip!

[Nicole]

Philip,
I really enjoy reading your blog on a daily basis. Thanks so much for sharing your intimate thoughts out loud. Great pictures too!

[tonya]

Oh and I was also going to say, you had curly brown hair!!!!

[Philip]

Chisel, I am not sure how my parents descended into bickering. My mom developed severe arthritis when she was around 40 years old; I think my dad became frustrated as it became increasingly difficult for her to get around. There were other issues too, but basically I think they ended up being at home alone together too much and got on each other's nerves!

I'm sure you have heard the Judy Collins version of CITY OF NEW ORLEANS which is actually how I learned the song. I didn't hear Goodman's own version til later.

Ann(e) lives in Syracuse with her husband Gary; they adopted three foster children many years ago and are now caring for the twin sons of one of the girls. Ann(e) and I stay in touch from time to time via e-mail but mostly it's just knowing she is there and unchanged that is reassuring. She could never decide whether she was Ann or Anne so she always spelled her name Ann(e).

By the time I learned that Dan had committed suicide I had come out and was living with TJ. I hadn't stopped to think how much more difficult life was for Dan than for me. Because he felt he could never talk about his sexuality with anyone, he kept everything inside until it became unbearable. I always regretted that I did not go back and try to help him once I found my own direction.

[tonya]

Speaking of Dan -- your friend I mean -- did you read the article in New York magazine this week about all the closeted gay men and how they're dealing with their double lives by hooking up with other guys online? It's really interesting. According to the writer, there are thousands of guys in New York alone who are doing this.

[Philip]

Apparently this phenomenon of 'gay' men getting married and even having kids while in the meantime hooking up with other men is widespread in China also.

I have to find and read that NY Times article; you would think that here is NYC it would be fairly easy to lead whatever kind of life you were born to. But obviously there are an awful lot of conflicted individuals out there.

Do you think there is a similar phenomenon among the female population?

[tonya]

I don't know -- that's a really interesting question! I had two cousins who came out long after they were married and had kids. One, already divorced at the time she hooked up with another woman, is bi and could easily go for another man someday -- I think she's just a really sexual person and could be sexual with anyone, but the other was definitely unfulfilled and denying herself something and she hooked up with the other woman before the divorce. It was kind of devastating to her kids and the whole family (small town people; I'm the only one living in the big city), but everyone got over it and everything's fine now, which actually surprises me a bit given my family. It seems like it's more of a complete lifestyle change for a man than a woman for some reason, though I don't know why. It's an interesting question!

Also interesting is why a man in NYC in 2007 would still be in the closet -- and the writer asked the same question. Basically the main guy interviewed seemed to not really know who he was when he got married (at 30) and began having kids. He now (in his 40s) thinks he just hadn't met the right guy back then so thought he was straight. And then when you're in your 40s and you've created a whole life for yourself it's almost impossible to leave it.

[Philip]

There is one school of thought that relationships between two men are basically sexual, or at least they start out that way, while relationships between two women usually develop from an emotional rather than a sexual bond.