Story Behind The Song

This is about my hometown; it's in timber and farming country and had two timber product mills and a cotton gin when I was born. By now, it's a small bedroom community, and it's decline was marked by the railroads decision to no longer stop here.

Song Description

What happens to a town that depended on the railroad when the railroad decides their train won't stop there any longer?

Lyrics

The Last Local
? C. Sandage/R. Rivers
2013

We've got railroad tracks and ghosts down through the middle of this town
Pickups once backed up for blocks when the crossing gate came down
We woke up to a whistle singing low and sighing deep
A late night freighter rocked us all to sleep

Mail and jobs and people came and went along these tracks
But the last local hauled them off - they're never coming back

When you grow up watching boxcars roll away
You know you're gonna follow them someday
You think sometime you'll come home to the whistle and the steam
But when that last local pulled away - it hauled off all those dreams

I see crew cars, loading docks, signal lights and side track
Station agent checks his watch, goes out to get the mail sack
He turns toward the depot, but the picture's not too clear
His footprints in the cinders disappear

Diesels still sail through now, but they don't touch this town
Nothing standing by the tracks - they tore the depot down
No one makes a living here, the loading docks are gone
The whistle's just a whistle, not a song

Trucks bring in the mail, and take logs out by the load
You can live here if you like to but you'll work somewhere up the road

When you grow up watching boxcars roll away
You know you're gonna follow them someday
But all those dreams of how it was back home
The last local hauled them off - they're gone

Playlist Creator	Playlist Name	Date Added
Diana Rasmussen	My Favorite Folk Songs	2/20/2015