Seventy Thoughts on Turning seventy

On the Night Train

Trying to find the right person to blame
Cause it’s easier putting a face to your fear than a name.

I drove to Philadelphia from Boston yesterday. It was a brilliantly beautiful late autumn day, with clear blue skies, a low lying sun and the last vestiges of the leaves, already brown but still clinging to the trees.

When I set out at 10 in the morning after lots of hugs and good byes with my grandchildren, I had no real plan for the drive. I knew the basic route I wanted to take... I have always been a Tappan Zee, Saw Mill Parkway person, in conflict with other Philly to Boston travelers who swear by the George Washington Bridge and the Merritt... but I had no plans for music to listen to and I hadn't pre-selected pod casts like everyone had advised me to do.

I stopped at the first plaza on the Mass Pike in Natick, got gas, used the restroom and bought a cup of coffee and a pack of M & N's, figuring that would last me until the top of the Garden State Parkway, where I thought I might stop and regroup.

When I pulled out of the service center back onto Route 90, ( my preferred route is 90 to 84 to 691 back to 84 to 684 to the Saw Mill to the Tappan Zee to the Garden State to the NJ turnpike to the PA turnpike to 476 ) I reconnected my phone and let the first song in my apple tunes play.

It was “Night Train,” by the Accidentals.

I love this song. I love the melody, the arrangement, the singing. But this time, I was reeled in by the lyrics.

It played and it felt like a prayer.

When it reached the end, it looped back around and played again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

I listened to this song exclusively for the entire six and a half hour drive and each time, I felt like I needed to hear it again.

So much of it touched me, at this time.

In the song a young woman gets on a train and travels across the country. We don't know why she's traveling, just that her grandmother pressed a half dollar coin in her hand and said, "Take this as far as you can."

I hadn't really paid much attention to this part of the song in the past - the role her grandmother played in her journey. But what a perfect time for me to latch onto it - after two wonderful weeks of "being Bubbe in Boston" and remembering the unconditional love I'd received from my Bubbe. I thought about her, and how she would have been thrilled to know that I had had so many adventures she never could have. Her greatest journey happened when she was a toddler, immigrating to this country with her mother from Belarus via Hamberg to Philadelphia --a journey so vast and life changing that she never really travelled again.

Throughout the song, the singer shares what she is seeing out the window - images of America -- farms, factories, homes with gardens -- while sharing her emotional responses and commenting on the American Dream.

So many of the lines fill me with wonder even now, as I was listening to it again before writing this and sharing it here. I started this essay with the one line that followed me into my dreams when I finally made it home last night. Then there was this one:

"Men forging steel into bridges their children would cross"

This took me back to my two weeks with my grandchildren, thinking about what I will be leaving behind for them as they walk into a future that I will not be part of.

Or this:

"The rusty old combines and factories rose from the past
And history fell in the shadows that each of them cast."

A perfect image and metaphor of the American past, the farm and the factory, the rural and urban --- our past casting its shadows and influencing what is happening in our chaotic and divided present.

Trains have always been a popular theme for folksongs. I'm sure all of you can pull up your favorite train songs from the dashboard of your memory.

This one is mine.

I originally encountered it in my newsfeed on Facebook and I thought it came from a friend's page. I wrote to him thanking him for the share when he responded -- you're welcome. but I never posted that song. I never even heard of it. I did a little more sleuthing, trying to find the original post, but I never did find it.

But I added it to my iTunes and it has been a part of my life ever since.

A lot of us are feeling fearful in these post election days. There’s trump acting like he has a mandate to do pretty terrible things to immigrants and religious minorities and women and people of color, gay and lesbian people and transgendered children and their parents- the most vulnerable among us. What insight and brilliance in this line which describes the way we are now:

It’s easier putting a face on your than a name.

Maybe it’s time for all of us to get on our own “night trains” literal and metaphor, and travel deep into the places that connect us all.