Riding on a Midnight Train Between Gigs
I have this romantic notion of what it would’ve been like to be a traveling troubadour or band member. They travel town to town with three chords and the truth. Kokopelli, the legendary Native American icon, traveled by foot all over the west with his flute.
In the early 1900s, those musicians traveled by train. There were sleeping cars and dinning cars and seats.
Imagine you’re the clarinet player in a swing band with the Les Brown Orchestra. You left your home to travel with this top touring band. Each stop is a gig but it’s also a place for laundry and real food. There was no time for site-seeing. The days between gigs are spent on a rolling room, perhaps practicing your instruments. They couldn’t do full rehearsal so it was more noodling and inventing. You need a break so you sit in the dinning car with a drink. Perhaps you snuck something harder than grape juice. The country goes by out the windows. Houses speed by. There are long stretches of land with an occasional dirty building and outhouse. Nights are just black. Maybe you see a far off light from a party. Back then you could smoke so you light up and watch that world outside.
The wheels click below you and the car sways from the speed. The sleeping car beds have thin mattresses like cots. No overhead voices. No news of those places speeding by. You are enclosed seeing the world. Is this how goldfish see us?
The next gig is tomorrow. The band will get off the train in a new place. The train will be back tomorrow night to do this again.