This song always brings back to me fond and bittersweet memories of riding the Rock Island Twin Star Rocket and the Santa Fe Texas Chief as a kid, riding from Houston to Oklahoma to go see my grandparents, sometimes as an unaccompanied minor. I mostly rode the Rock to Duncan, OK, until it disappeared, at which time I rode the Chief to Paul's Valley, OK. I never got to ride the City of New Orleans though. Back then, travel by air was a very expensive thing, and I never flew until I was 13 or 14. It is a terrible irony that we now think of our time as being so valuable that we must hurry our travels, using up our fuel and our money so that we have more time to hurry at the next endeavor at the next destination. We've lost sight of the simple fact that it is the journey itself that makes us grow and learn. We've lost sight of the fact that the time we spend among fellow travelers is an enriching experience. We've lost the patience to see our country out the window. We are going so fast we are losing our lives, while we fear that we will miss something if we don't hurry.
Slow down.