Back in 1955, I took off from Washington state aiming for Wissconsin. I missed and ended up in Georgia. I was heading into the army that Fall and I wanted to scratch my itchy foot a little. Somewhere in that trip, I found myself standing in the living room of a small house that was the "Casey Jones Museum." I'm not sure, but it might have been in Missouri or Kentucky. (You see one state ... you've seen them all, right?).

This living room was plastered with posters, photos of Casey Jones. Much souvenir stuff was for sale: wooden train whistles, photos, broadsides of the several song versions. The one thing that I remember well was a framed newspaper article that focused on the serious controversy about the authorship of the "real" ballad.

Bob