“Trouble in Mind” is a song that I know, but I don’t remember where I first heard it, or learned to sing it. The tune is memorable. In a sense, the words speak of a different America, one that many of us think about in a nostalgic way … one that included railroads.
If you think about trains and motion pictures, and are at all familiar with silent films, you will know that trains were often seen. The damsel in distress was tied to the railroad irons and about to be run over by a train, when her hero rescues her and they both go off into the sunset together.
In the song, “Trouble in Mind,” the writer talks about letting the 2:19 train ease his troubled mind. We know what that means. They don’t call this music, the “Blues,” for no reason.
Today, we mostly see broken down, old boxcars, sitting on tracks that now are overgrown with grass and shrubs. The age of the American train is all but over, unless you count commuter trains such as the Amtrak train that whizzes by, in back of my son’s house, shaking and rattling the contents of the house at it noisily follows its appointed route to Boston.
In New Hampshire, we still have the Cog Railway that makes it way up Mt. Washington, a feat in train engineering, and a steady tourist attraction. In Maine, President’s Restaurant has a high shelf that allows a toy train to circulate through the rooms. At Christmas, some folks place toy trains around their trees. Yes, we Americans are fascinated with trains. The image of trains has shown up on the surface of fabrics, vintage and new, a number of times.
When I was a kid, I remember my mother recounting a tale about one of her cousins who lived down South. He was kind of a hobo as he’d “hop a train,” riding in an empty boxcar, headed north, during the Great Depression. He knew my grandmother was a good cook and there was always plenty to eat, partly because my grandfather cultivated a large garden for his family of 13, and pear trees whose fruit Nana and the older girls “put up.” That cousin would visit until he’d worn out his welcome, and then he’d move on. However, like the swallows to Capistrano, he’d return.
The one thing I really like about “Trouble in Mind” is the glimmer of hope it offers. When the day is dark and hope seems lost, it is good to cling to an idea such as “the sun’s gonna shine in my back door someday.”
With no trouble in mind this morning, I’ll get dressed and go about my chores and errands for the day. I hope your day is all that is can be, and that you will have no “trouble in mind.”
Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications
Quilter’s Muse Publications
