Chav-anooga Choo-Choo
Dec. 16th, 2004 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davywavyYou're probably aware of the song "Chatanooga Choo-Choo". Written in 1941, it's a pean to a nation at the peak of it's financial, industrial, and moral powers; a time before the American Dream and the Great Society were broken by the 1960's and Vietnam, before the second World War; a time when the United States said anything was possible there - and nobody laughed. It's a song about travelling at great speed down the Eastern states from New York to Tennessee, and the things that one can do and see on the way. It's a song about the joy of being a happy and prosperous person, in a happy and prosperous age. For example:
You leave the Pennsylvania Station 'bout a quarter to four
Read a magazine and then you're in Baltimore
Dinner in the diner
Nothing could be finer
Than to have your ham an' eggs in Carolina
Both sister and I were out of our respective offices yesterday to see clients, outings that required us both to use the rail system through some of the less salubrious corners of our island. When we got home, we bitched at each other about the experience, and then, as these things tend to turn out, it became something of a musical night in Davywavy Mansion. Ah, the joy of modern rail travel.
Pardon me, boy
Is that the Chavanooga choo-choo?
It's a second rate line
The trains are never on time
I can afford
To board the Chavanooga choo-choo
On platform fourteen
Next to the ticket machine
You leave the Liverpool Street Station at a funeral crawl,
Sometimes it appears that you're not moving at all,
Skipping lunch was folly,
But what could be more jolly
Than a ninty pence Twix from the on-board trolley?
When you notice Romford showing on the display
Then you know that Shenfield's only one stop away.
Wait outside the station
With no explanation
Woo - woo Chelmsford, sometime today.
There's gonna be
A load of townies at the station
Drinking Special Brew
They'll start threatening you
You'll see a drunken loafer with some scars on his neck
You'll see his little brother dressed in Burberry check
Then there's the ladies
With their tattoos and their babies
One of each colour - they're collecting the set.
So Chavanooga choo choo
Won't you choo-choo me home?
Chavanooga choo choo
Won't you choo-choo me home?
You leave the Pennsylvania Station 'bout a quarter to four
Read a magazine and then you're in Baltimore
Dinner in the diner
Nothing could be finer
Than to have your ham an' eggs in Carolina
Both sister and I were out of our respective offices yesterday to see clients, outings that required us both to use the rail system through some of the less salubrious corners of our island. When we got home, we bitched at each other about the experience, and then, as these things tend to turn out, it became something of a musical night in Davywavy Mansion. Ah, the joy of modern rail travel.
Pardon me, boy
Is that the Chavanooga choo-choo?
It's a second rate line
The trains are never on time
I can afford
To board the Chavanooga choo-choo
On platform fourteen
Next to the ticket machine
You leave the Liverpool Street Station at a funeral crawl,
Sometimes it appears that you're not moving at all,
Skipping lunch was folly,
But what could be more jolly
Than a ninty pence Twix from the on-board trolley?
When you notice Romford showing on the display
Then you know that Shenfield's only one stop away.
Wait outside the station
With no explanation
Woo - woo Chelmsford, sometime today.
There's gonna be
A load of townies at the station
Drinking Special Brew
They'll start threatening you
You'll see a drunken loafer with some scars on his neck
You'll see his little brother dressed in Burberry check
Then there's the ladies
With their tattoos and their babies
One of each colour - they're collecting the set.
So Chavanooga choo choo
Won't you choo-choo me home?
Chavanooga choo choo
Won't you choo-choo me home?
