Steve Goodman wrote it, Arlo Guthrie made it famous, you know when you hear it and can probably hum it if not sing it.

 

The City of New Orleans

by Steve Goodman

 

Riding on the City of New Orleans,

Illinois Central Monday morning rail

Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,

Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail.

All along the southbound odyssey

The train pulls out at Kankakee

Rolls along past houses, farms and fields.

Passin’ trains that have no names,

Freight yards full of old black men

And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.

 

CHORUS:

Good morning America how are you?

Don’t you know me I’m your native son,

I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans,

I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.*

For a long time I’ve wondered about this place, Kankakee; figured here must be some romance to the place to garner a mention in the song. Uh, no. Not unless things have gone way-downhill for Kankakee over the years since 1971. More likely, the train from Chicago to New Orleans stopped in Kankakee; and the name fit the meter of the lyric.

Today we drove from Indianapolis to Madison, WI. We decided we’d prefer not to re-trace our steps, so that meant leaving Indy to the west instead of the more direct route to Chicago. We looked at a map and decided Kankakee was not too much of a stretch. We did enjoy the ride because we got to take some rural roads through real farms, both corn and wind. The mid-west feeds America and the world of course. But it’s also becoming dotted with wind farms. We love the graceful look of the vanes on the modern windmills. Today we saw a massive wind farm under construction. Most of the windmills had their generators but no vanes. We did see some vanes and some tubes on massive trucks heading to the wind farm.

Madison is fun. We’ve been here before for the graduation of a nephew. We found a BBQ that serves gluten-free ribs. It’s hot and very humid, a 1.5 mile walk to and from dinner pretty much tired us out.

*Tomorrow we plan to drive just about… five hundred miles.