Art's comments inspired me to whip out my Utah Phillips CD and scan the lyrics to Tolono, one of the great songs on a great album. Every home needs one of these.

TOLONO
Bruce Phillips

I was headed for Tolono on the Wabash Cannonball,
Norfolk and Western all the way,
St. Louis down the line
Detroit somewhere behind,
I thought I heard that old conductor say;

Chorus:
No round trip ticket, you're on the final run,
This Cannonball is never coming back;
Tomorrow she'll just be
Another memory
And an echo down a rusty railroad track.

I got off at Tolono, just below Champaign,
A flag stop on the edge of yesterday;
The whistle blew a song,
I whispered "So long"
Waved my hand and slowly walked away

Chorus

I think about tomorrow and wonder why it is
We give up all the things we love the most.
Goodbye you old hog
I'll have to ride the dog
Until they build a subway coast to coast.

Chorus

From the notes to Philo CD 1004, Good Though, Bruce U. Utah Phillips, 1973/1997

Of course you all know about the Wabash Cannonball. What you may not know is that, after the initial popularity of the song, it became a real train run by the Wabash system between Detroit and St. Louis. Six years ago the Wabash system was bought up by Norfolk and Western who ran it into the ground. Finally, Amtrak took it off. I rode on the last run of the Cannonball from Detroit to Tolono — a flag stop five miles south of Champaign, Illinois. It was a fine run and only after I got off on that little windswept platform in the middle of the great American Nowhere did it finally hit me that the Cannonball would not he coming hack. So I sat fight down that night and made up this farewell.

"Tomorrow she'll just he another memory and an echo down a rusty railroad track."

Look friend; the great trains are dying. You read about it in your paper over breakfast coffee. There goes the Cannonball. There goes the Montreal Limited. There go the City of New Orleans and the Portland Rose. All gone. But don't mourn them. That kind of gigantic earth-striding energy cannot sustain itself forever There are too many of us. Our lives are compressed and encapsulated. Wings carry us to places that look every day more and more like each other Down below, pathetic remnants of once living iron creep with ponderous slow majesty through our haunted frontiers, tragic, poetic, gone forever But don't mourn them. Rather, mourn the passing of their orphaned children. The ragged, shambling brutish shadows dodging through the rusty silent yards, their single and truest voice the sobbing loneliness of a Midnight Ghost wailing through dark frozen bills. Rather mourn the passing of the last free men. And remember how it is with them —true freedom begins with the passing of joy. There are other things I'd like to say and sing about. Maybe when I'm out around where you are, I'll have a chance to do just that. But for now, this is the best I can do. Maybe I've said too much, hut I don't think so. If anything, I hope we've been able to share something together That's good enough.