randy newman “dixie flyer”
from: land of dreams, 1988
Today’s post is thick with verbiage. I came across the poem below and thought Randy Newman would have something similar. He does. Never have written a book of fiction. But if I ever did it would start with these two sentences: “Everybody has a story. Every story is worth telling.” For instance, how about your miraculous story?
Poet Jeff Coomer
“History Lesson
by Jeff Coomer
My grandfather left school at fourteen
to work odd jobs until he was old enough
to join his Lithuanian kin chipping
anthracite out of the Pennsylvania hills.
Nine hours a day with five hundred feet
of rock over his head, then an hour’s
ride home on the company bus
to a dinner of boiled cabbage and chicken.
When the second big war broke
he headed “sout,” as he pronounced it,
for better work in the blast furnaces
churning out steel along the shores
of the Chesapeake. Thirty-two years
and half an index finger later he retired
to a brick rancher he built with his own hands
just outside the Baltimore city line.
The spring he got cancer and I got a BA
from a private college we stood under
a tree in his backyard while he copped
a smoke out of my grandmother’s sight.
“Tell me, Pop,” I said, wanting to strike up
a conversation, “how did you like
working in the mills all those years?”
He studied my neatly pressed white shirt,
took a long drag on his cigarette and spit a fleck
of tobacco near my shoes. “Like,” he said,
“didn’t have a thing to do with it.”
”
Randy pictured with his two sons.
“I was born right here, November forty three
Dad was a captain in the army
Fighting the Germans in Sicily
My poor little momma
Didn’t know a soul in L.A.
So we went down to the Union Station
Made our getaway
Got on the Dixie Flyer bound for New Orleans
Across the state of Texas to the land of dreams
On the Dixie Flyer bound for New Orleans
Back to her friends and her family in the land of dreams
Her own mother came to meet us at the station
Her dress as black as a crow in a coal mine
She cried when her little girl got off the train
Her brothers and her sisters came down from Jackson, Mississippi
In a great green Hudson driven by a Gentile they knew
Drinkin’ rye whiskey from a flask in the back seat
Tryin’ to do like the Gentiles do
Christ, they wanted to be Gentiles, too
Who wouldn’t down there, wouldn’t you
An American Christian, God damn
On the Dixie Flyer bound for New Orleans
Back to her friends and her family in the land of dreams
On the Dixie Flyer bound for New Orleans
Across the state of Texas to the land of dreams
Across the state of Texas to the land of dreams”
