friscoroad

Frisco Road

There's lots of kinds of people in our system who don't fit. There are some people who will not take an eight-hour-a-day job. They're not afraid of work; they just don't like working all the time at the same thing in one place. Some people are not suited to the kind of life that most people lead, and there ought to be room for them.
I took Saul Broudy down to show him the yards outside of Decatur, Illinois. Those are really big, complicated yards. We got down there and couldn't even see the yards because they were blanketed by this thick gray pall of smoke from the Staley soybean factory. I'd never walk into that railroad yard - you'd get squashed flatter than a bug. So we walked around the outside of the yard for a while and left. That's when we picked up Teddy.
Teddy was a railroad bum in his late 60's, 40 years on the trains. His claim to fame was that he'd never been to either coast in all those 40 years. Didn't like people. Held just say, "The coasts are too crowded, too many people there. "
The Chicago yards had been too tough. They're automated, so there's not too many people in the yards to ask what's being made up. He couldn't get one out, so after two days he decided held try to hitch-hike down to St. Louis and catch the Frisco Road, the express train from St. Louis to San Francisco.
Hitch-hiking is hard on an old railroad burn. They hate it, especially these old jocker hobos who don't want to have anything to do with people. They feel very vulnerable out there on the highway, with the state troopers staring over the rim of the coffee cup, and all those little red pick-ups with the gun racks in the back.

(spoken)
Standing here in the breakdown lane, don't think I'll make it today;
And I wish the road was a big freight train, blowing and rolling my way.
I know the rain wouldn't seem so cold on the top of an old boxcar,
And wherever it was I was trying to go, it wouldn't seem half so far.

I remember the Roper yard cafe and a pretty little beanery queen;
She gave those jailhouse spuds away to a bum she'd never seen.
Well, I tipped her with a couple of rhymes on the back of a placemat there,
And I've thought about her plenty of times when I couldn't bum a square.

Or the time we rode on a piggy-back, punching the Great Divide;
The blowing snow had iced the track and the train got stuck inside;
The diesel fumes they got so thick I thought we'd all be gassed,
Then they sanded her out just in the nick and punched her through at last.

Now I don't claim to be too proud to shag a ride on my thumb,
But I'd trade this whole hitch-hiking crowd for a honest old railroad bum;
And if there ever comes a day when the rails have gone to rust,
I'll put my jug and bindle away and give up in disgust.

Beyond these gentle Eastern hills and the soft New England sky
Do the highball whistles echo still where the mile-long blazers fly?
Sitting here by the toll road gates, I wonder as I rest,
Do the heavy, clanking, lonely freights still thunder a-way out West?

(sung)
Have you seen the morning sun putting shadows on the run
As you were climbing out of some old reefer hole,
High above the roaring wheels? Then you know just how it feels
To ride the tops and watch the prairies roll.

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