Jun 16, 2017 4 min read

The best song ever written about a train was actually written on a train. Arlo Guthrie recorded the most famous version of “City of New Orleans,” but Steve Goodman wrote it, while traveling from Chicago to New Orleans to visit his wife’s family. It’s one of my favorite songs because the lyrics paint a picture of a time gone by:

And the sons of Pullman porters

And the sons of engineers

Ride their fathers’ magic carpet made of steel.

I like when the song pops up on my iPod playlist, as it did while I was taking my walk Wednesday night. It had been a hard day for all of us, with news of the shootings in Alexandria, and I was hoping the brisk walk would level out some of the anxiety I’d been feeling. As I listened to the bouncy rhythm of the song, I decided the one thing that might clear my head would be a train ride.

I have always loved trains – not so much the mechanics or the history of them – but the idea and the feeling of them. On a trip to New York City at Christmastime last year, I curled against the window of the Amtrak business car and watched as we sliced our diagonal path through almost all of Pennsylvania.

At top speeds, trees and scenery are blurry through the window, but as we slow down through towns, the world comes into focus and I see the brown and gray scramble of orderly, busy life. My eyes dart back and forth to catch the names on signs as we roll by. From that vantage point, the world appears in control – houses are lined in tidy rows, children climb onto school buses, churches send their steeples up into the sky with the same confidence and blessed assurance as always. It feels like nothing’s controlled or assured any more. The news is mostly sad, or bad, or angry. To escape the onslaught, I turn off the TV and computer, but the rancor always finds a way to seep through.

A train ride would let me escape. One of those three-week trips through the Canadian Rockies would be perfect – nothing but open space and mountains and the hum of the wheels on the rails. As I picture it, I am riding away from all the chaos and toward a place where it can’t touch me and cause all this worry and anxiety.

Experts say that one way to calm fears and anxiety is through mental imagery. Picture yourself on a tropical beach, they say. Palm trees always figure in these discussions.

For me, the calming image is not palm trees or the beach, but a big, soft window seat on a train that’s cradled by all the little towns and big forests and high mountains that pass by. When he wrote the song in 1970, Steve Goodman captured something romantic and true about our country. Its refrain of “Good morning, America, how are ya?” is happy and hopeful. America’s not doing so well these days, and we’re reminded of it too often.

And so I come back to that wonderful verse:

Mothers with their babes asleep

Are rocking to the gentle beat

And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel.

I would like to live in that scene right now, to remind myself that, despite everything, our country is still that orderly world I see out the train window.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.