phoebesnow

Phoebe Snow

I was in Chicago, standing outside of an empty yard, and had to get to Bloomington, Illinois. I saw those beautiful Gulf, Mobile and Ohio freight trains made up and ready to head south, with the red and maroon GMO boxcars with the gold stripe around them. A train like that is irresistible to me. I figured it was probably going to St. Louis to be rehumped and a lot of the cars sent west because it was hauling a lot of Burlington, Denver Rio Grande, Santa Fe, and a few Union Pacific.
The car I got was an old Phoebe Snow boxcar from the Erie Lackawanna in Pennsylvania. At the time the name Phoebe Snow conjured up the face and form of anybody I'd ever been in love with, so I made up this song for want of anything better to do. Then I crossed the state and sang the song first in the big jungle camp in Danville. It wasn't until I got back to Chicago that Richard Marko, a Chicago performer, told me who Phoebe Snow really was.
The Erie Lackawanna was the first line to use anthracite coal, which meant that their trains were soot free. You could ride their passenger runs without getting a lot of soot in your clothing. To advertise that fact they used a cartoon character, a beautiful woman all dressed in white, long white gloves, white hat, white purse. She would be talking to somebody across the aisle about how clean it was to ride the Route of the Anthracite. Her name was Phoebe Snow.
She was famous all over the country for many years. About 1963 the Erie Lackawanna discontinued their passenger runs and took Phoebe Snow off. But you can still find some of those old Phoebe Snow boxcars if you look around a yard.

I climbed on board through a wide open door
Just as she started to roll,
And I rode so light through the long summer night
In the arms of my own Phoebe Snow.
(chorus)

(spoken)
Many a night I've sat by the fire
In a circle of stone silent men,
And heard the sagebrush whistle and pop
And the coffee boil in the can.

The bottoms were filled with a cool river wind
And the treetops chasing the moon
And I knew without saying to take my guitar
And play up some slow gentle tune.

I played up a face I knew long ago
And the song was the sound of a name,
I knew without looking that every man there
Was each of them doing the same.

Then I played up some hands so pale and small
With a touch as light as the rain,
And I knew without looking that every man there
Was each of 'em feeling the same.

Then I played up the booze and the holes in the shoes
Of a man whose life is a cage,
And all the things done to make a man run,
The hard luck and failures of age -
Then I stopped with a crash - we looked into the ash,
Helpless with longing and rage.

Now a traveling life might seem all right,
A life without worry or care;
Always up and always out and always going somewhere,
But I'll tell you, friend-it's not where you are
But your reason for being there.

(sung)
And then I awoke as the day broke,
And gazed out over the plain,
Thinking as how I'm better off now
Being in love with a train.
(chorus)

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