How Hank Williams and Robert Johnson Tricked Me Into Thinking Trains Are From The South

It was only recently that I — a man in his forties — realized trains are not an inherently Southern phenomenon.

This is, of course, ridiculous. Trains are not even American (the British invented them). But I’ve always thought of trains as a Southern thing, in the same category as grits, sweet tea, and saying “Bless your heart” with varying degrees of sincerity. I was born and raised in the South, and it’s hard for me to separate trains, tracks, and trestles from the Southern landscape.

I blame musicians.

From blues and country to bluegrass and jazz, the South was the birthplace of American vernacular music. And the way songwriters and performers have sung about the South has shaped the way we think about it.

These songs, the soundtrack of Southern life, treat trains like part of the landscape. You don’t even have to see them to know they’re there. Sure, Hank Williams heard that lonesome whippoorwill, but he also heard that lonesome whistle blow (when he was heading south from Caroline). The train was there, as much a part of the aural backdrop as the song of the mourning dove. In fact, it’s so much a part of the landscape that Williams never even uses the word “train” in the song — he assumes people know what he’s talking about. And he’s right.

Nowadays, if we want to ship something from point A to point B, we have a lot of options. Packages can travel via plane, train, or tractor-trailer. But in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were no cargo planes or highways. Railroads were the beating heart of the American economy.

The South’s economy was rooted in agriculture (pun intended), and farmers relied on the railroad to get their goods to market. Because farms were spread across the South, train tracks branched throughout the region like a network of blood vessels. Even small towns could end up with their own train depot, if they happened to be at a lucky spot where several tracks crossed paths.

As a result, folks who lived in rural areas could see (or at least hear) trains going by, and they’d know those trains were headed for places they’d only heard of: Charleston, St. Louis, Chicago, New York. Very often, those trains would be taking family, friends and neighbors with them — particularly as the Great Migration got under way in the early twentieth century.

So it makes sense that trains would be a spur to the imagination.

In “Mystery Train,” Junior Parker tells you how long the train is and that it took his baby away (and brought her back). You never know where it came from or where it went. It is, after all, a mystery train. The lyrics probably echo the way a lot of folks felt, watching people they knew roll past on trains bound for … well, somewhere else.

Plenty of songs addressed the heartache of watching loved ones leave on the rails. Robert Johnson didn’t just lose his girlfriend to an outbound train; he had to carry her luggage to the station. All his love was in vain.

Trains were so integral to Southern life that, over time, songwriters used the absence of trains to convey regional decline. As James Jett wrote (and Doc Watson sang): “The whistles don’t sound like they used to, lately not many trains go by.”

These were all songs written and performed by Southerners for a Southern audience (Robert Johnson almost certainly did not expect his recordings to be heard in Boston, much less around the world). I listened to these songs as a child, as a young adult, and then as a not-so-young adult, and the lyrics corresponded to what I saw around me. When the windows were wide open on humid summer nights, I could hear that lonesome whistle blowing in the distance.

So, I fell prey to a classic misinterpretation: because trains were an essential part of the South, I thought of trains as essentially Southern.

As I said, I know that’s ridiculous. I suspect more people ride trains in New York City than there are train passengers in the entire state of North Carolina. And Robert Johnson’s “Love in Vain” was sufficiently universal to be covered by a bunch of British guys.

But you can understand why I’d be confused.

Right?