These notes are the stories behind some of my songs.
This is about the appearance of Raynald Ouellet at the 1999 Northeast Squeeze-In. There's no melody. It's intended as a dramatic reading, a la Johnny Cash doing "Big John".
Raynald is an outstanding musician who makes fine instruments. He does occasional public performances and has a very nice compact disk which is available from the Buttonbox (see links).
This was written after and about the 1999 Northeast Squeeze-In which was held at Bucksteep Manor, and it was performed at the 2000 Squeeze-in. Info is on the Button Box link.
There is a story behind this song. It's about a cruise my wife and I took out of Savannah, Georgia. It was a safe and comfortable cruise, but there were some problems in meeting the schedule and a couple of ports were missed. The preceding cruise out of the same port had also run into problems, and some of the passengers accepted the company's offer of a reduced price on this cruise as a means of making amends.
When problems began cropping up on this cruise, many passengers became frustrated and angry. The words started coming to me, and on the last night of the cruise I performed this song in the passenger talent show. I nearly died on the first verse. The second verse drew some polite snickers. The third verse got a good roar, and the fifth verse got them screaming. When I finished they applauded and yelled like I was Elvis and they were a bunch of teenagers. I went home with a pocket full of e-mail addresses of people who wanted copies of the song.
Now to tell the story so you can understand the song.
The ship docked at a freight terminal which had no passenger facilities. Passengers reported to a luxury hotel parking ramp where they were picked up by buses to go to the ship. The ship was late getting into port due to heavy fog at the mouth of the river. The previous cruise had taken it to Colombia, and there was suspicion of a drug smuggling attempt, so it took extra long for the debarking passengers to clear customs. So we waited. We had been told that a lunch buffet would open on the ship at 2:00 p. m., so most of us didn't bother with lunch. It was nearly dark when we reached the ship, and all ship services, including food service, were suspended until after lifeboat drill.
The river channel was narrow and the ship tied up parallel. It had to go several miles upstream to a turning basin to get turned around and head back to sea.
Because of the delay in getting off, we couldn't stop at Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic, but we did make it there on the return.
We were supposed to visit St. Bart's, a tiny French island on a Sunday. There was no port there, so we would have gone ashore in lighters. The crew made a trial run and almost swamped their boat, so we went on for an unschedualed visit to Antigua.
We tied up to the freight terminal at Antigua. The ship left an hour early due to "weather conditions" but it was obvious that an inbound freighter needed our space.
All during the cruise, there had been a tropical disturbance in the western Gulf of Mexico. We were given the port lecture for Tortola, where we were supposed to dock the next day, but come morning Tortola was nowhere in sight. The captain came on the horn and announced that the tropical system had become Hurricane Denny and was heading straight for us. He took the ship north of Puerto Rico while the hurricane went south, wiping out the harbor where we had docked at St. Croix. But the consolation was that we would visit Puerto Plata after all.
I was listening to a nice dance band, with accordions, fiddles and other instruments, and watching the dancers. A week or two later I awoke dreaming of a pair of middle-aged newlyweds who were dancing there, and these words were pouring into my head.
This is about a Milwaukee Road steam locomotive which pulled a passenger train between Madison, Wisconsin, and Portage, Wisconsin, where it connected with the intercontinental streamliner the Hiawatha. The Ten Wheeler name applies to the 4-6-0 wheel arrangement, which consists of four small leading wheels, six large drive wheels and no trailing wheels. There are other classes of locomotives with ten wheels, but they are not Ten Wheelers. This is the same wheel arrangement as that of the locomotive which Casey Jones crashed. The boiler explosion described here occurred around 1950. The term "hogger" is slang for engineer or driver.
This is a bit of a spoof on a Chicago and North Western train which was discontinued in the 1950s. It usually consisted of two units. The head unit had a gasoline engine which turned an electric generator to produce power for the wheels. It had a baggage room and a small passenger section, making it a combination car. It usually pulled a passenger car. It was never called a 400, which was the name reserved for the company's top streamliners. The first 400 ran the 400 miles between Chicago and Minneapolis in 400 minutes.
This is about a Milwaukee Road switch engine class I-5, which was stationed at Madison, Wisconsin, during the 1950s. It had a strong syncopated sound. It did a switching run on the branch which went west of town toward Middleton. I used to watch it across the tracks from the university dairy barn. I am not sure that I have given it the correct number. It might have been the 1412, as it was located in the Madison yards, too. But 1458 fits the rythm better.
This is about a steam logging tractor of a type that was used extensively in Maine. It looks like a small steam locomotive, but it is driven by crawler tracks and is supported in front and steered by a pair of skiis or sled runners. It is featured in the book "logging with Steam" by W. M. Harris and published by the Village Press of Traverse City, Michigan. A restored operating example is said to be on display at Clark's Trading Post in Lincoln New Hampshire. Another one is said to be in a museum at Patten, Maine.