I wish I had heard about this sooner. For instance, I wouldn’t have put so much effort into making a nice raised veggie garden out back. I might have bought better Scotch. I could have slept in a few mornings. Unfortunately I only heard about the apocalypse this morning. Here’s a brief except from the website:
The Apocalypse will Suck!
For those left behind, they will instantly know that they were wrong, Jesus DOES exist! May 21st Doomsday will start with a Global Earthquake to mark the return of Jesus, while the true believers are brought to Heaven, the non-believers will be in the presence of the Lord. Jesus will start ruling the Earth on May 21st, at the start of the Apocalypse 2011, and rule over the earth for 5 months. During these 5 months of torment life will suck. Those waiting for the End of the World to come will experience the Battle of Armageddon between Jesus and Satan until the king wins on October 21, 2011. Once Jesus defeats the Devil on October 21 the End of the World will come when God destroys the Earth faster than he created it.
This is particularly unfortunate because after several days of rain, Saturday promises to be a really nice sunny day. I was going to plant my tomatoes. Is there anything in particular you want to get done before the apocalypse?
The train song of the day for today, #48 if you’re counting, is The Ballad of John Henry. There must be a squillion recorded versions of this tune. It’s a big story, that’s why. It’s a story of a proud man who refuses to be replaced by a machine. See, John Henry raced a steam drill, tunnelling through a mountain, and won, only to die with his 9 pound hammer in his hand. The story of John Henry is one of the most persistent legends to come out of the push to build railroads across the mountain west to the coast. Here are some excellent versions…
Let’s start with Piedmont blues legends Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. It happens that these guys were the first performers I ever saw in a bar. It was at the old El Mocambo and they were fantastic.
Here’s a nice tough version by Mississippi Fred McDowell for all the guitar pickers out there…
Do you like Tennessee Ernie Ford
Here’s the Blind James Cameron String Band. I love this one. The tuba is perfect…
….and just for kicks, here’s a version on cookie tin fretless banjo
There are a lot of versions of this song. A quick Youtube search came up with over 15,000 results. These are just a few of the ones I enjoy.
Oh, wait….I almost forgot Furry Lewis. I love Furry’s version.
I hear a rumour that we may have a sunny day on the weekend here in the Greater Toronto Area. This of couse may be followed by several more days of rain.
Roselands Horitcultural Society Plant Sale Saturday, May 21, 2011 9 am until noon (arrive at 9:00 for best selection. There won’t be anything left by noon, and probably not much interesting by 10:00) Northwest quadrant of Eglinton Flats Park (west of Jane, turn on Emmett Avenue from Eglinton).
Nothing lasts forever. Eventually, I will run out of train songs. How many can there be, after all?
I’ve decided to extend the train song of the day for only 50 more days. After that, I know there will still be plenty of train songs out there we haven’t explored together, but I’m OK with that. I should also freely admit, that there are lots of train songs I simply don’t like all that much and I’m not going to post those. Call it blogger’s privilege.
I’m going to count down from 50. If, along the way, you know of a train song you’d like me to post, if I can find it on the interwebs, I’ll consider your request. The last 50 are in no particular order.
#50 The Wreck of the Royal Palm performed by Frank Evans
I know some of you thought I forgot all about the train song of the day today. Not so. Here’s Roy Acuff from 1947 performing Freight Train Blues. I love this recording. Listen to the fantastic harmonica toward the end of the cut!
Later on, a young Bob Dylan covered this tune on his first record. Dylan did a pretty good job of it, but you can’t beat the Acuff version.
It’s a damp day here in Anchovy-town. A steady blend of mist and drizzle has been falling all day. This will at least give the gardens a great boost. Today was a day for working around the house and believe me, and I have plenty of jobs I’ve been dodging and procrastinating to choose from.
Happily, I managed to do quite a bit of work cleaning up the gardens the other day before the rain. I planted three of my tomato plants this morning. I’ll wait until the long weekend for the rest. Usually the long weekend in May is considered the safe time to plant tomatoes when all danger of frost has passed and nights warm up.
My father used to go to some lengths to ensure early tomatoes. He’d start his seeds indoors under lights. Then he would “harden them off” outside using a crude cold-frame warmed by a light bulb. For me, I’ll just be happy to get a few tomatoes from the backyard. I think the sunlight is marginal here for a good tomato crop. Back at the old place, we didn’t have a huge garden, but we got plenty of sun and we had a huge tomato crop every year. Removing an old apple tree last year opened the canopy up some and growing some veggies this year is my folly.
The train song of the day is a Jimmie Rodgers tune called Brakeman’s Blues performed here in fine style by the Punch Brothers.
So, what exactly is a brakeman? The following is excerpted from Wikipedia….
In the US, the brakeman was a member of a railroad train’s crew responsible for assisting with braking a train when the conductor wanted the train to slow down. A brakeman’s duties also included ensuring that the couplings between cars were properly set, lining switches, and signaling to the train operators while performing switching operations. The brakemen rode in the caboose, the last car in the train, which was built specially to allow a crew member to apply the brakes of the caboose quickly and easily, which would help to slow the train. In rare cases, such as descending a long, steep grade, brakemen might be assigned to several cars, and be required to operate the brakes while the train was moving from atop the train. Brakemen were also required to watch the train when it was underway to look for signs of hot box, (a dangerous overheating of axles,) as well as for people trying to ride the train for free, and cargo shifting or falling off.
As rail transport technology has improved, a brakeman’s duties have been reduced and altered to match the updated technology, and the brakeman’s job has become much safer than it was in the early days of railroading. Individually operated car brakes were replaced with automatic air brakes, eliminating the need for the brakeman to walk atop a moving train to set the brakes. Link and pin couplings were replaced with automatic couplings, and hand signals are now supplemented by two-way radio communication.
Today…
Freight and yard crews consisting of conductor, engineer, and brakeman usually employ the brakeman in throwing hand operated track switches to line up for switching moves and assisting in cuts and hitches as cars are dropped off and picked up.
In passenger service, the brakeman (called trainman or assistant conductor) collects revenue, may operate door “through switches” for specific platforming needs, makes announcements, and operates trainline door open and close controls when required to assist the conductor. A passenger service trainman is often required to qualify as a conductor after 1 to 2 years experience. The rear end trainman signals to the conductor when all the train’s doors are safely closed, then boards and closes his/her door.
It’s no surprise that the brakeman’s job is a mystery to many. These days, we hardly know anything about trains. Here’s Chuck Mitchell performing Utah Phillip’s Daddy What’s a Train…
I don’t know exactly why I like trains, but maybe it’s imprinted somehow. When I was a kid, me and the Junction boys would go over to the tracks back of Ryding Park and lay slugs on the tracks and wait for the freights to come by and flatten them. It was the end of an era. Across Dundas St. from my dad’s window shop, the Queen City Leatherworks was still operating, but I think things were winding down by that point. Back in the day, my grandpa made gloves for the railwaymen there in the junction. They made gloves downstairs, had a retail storefront on the main floor, and some living space behind the store and upstairs too. It was a pretty self-contained kind of operation. I loved hearing my dad’s stories from those Junction days.
I put in the garden above last year. Everything seems to be coming back just fine + I’ve added a few annuals for colour until the perennials start to come into their own. There are two small saskatoon berry bushes in there and a dogwood and I expect those to start really anchoring the centre of this garden this year.
This garden is in the back. I put this one in two seasons ago. It’s a little slower to come back and is in a shadier spot, but I think it’s coming along just fine. The border is made from some stuff that was lying around the place when we moved in. My plan is to replace a few of those cast pieces each year with nicer rocks.
27th Street 