History Lesson
Nov. 18th, 2004 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonI'm standing on the corner of Decatur & Grant waiting on a ride from the "Magpie". Around me at the MLK station the brothers are just getting off work. Their arriving in waves trying to catch the #9 or #31 or hop the West bound line for Five Points or East bound for H E Holmes station. A wave of business suits, mechanic coveralls,paint/plaster splattered jeans held up by tanned leather tool belts, proud in bright power ties that shout "Whoah! There little man take a step back and give a working man some Slack!", some wearing their cell phones in holsters worn old west style ready to "Ready,Aim,Fire" and a hundred and fifty one others all rushing with a unique and mad determination, all passing in and out of my blurring vision. I watch some teens arrive at the convenience store across the street, where they gather in clusters of laughter in the parking lot around menthol cigarettes and a brownpapper bagged bottle. I catch sight of one cat, strolling slow with all the time in the world coming out from the tunnel of the overpass; his ancient face tucked away under a faded Braves cap and well shielded with an honest smile & he's singing all soft and sonorous with this sweet rhythm rolling right off his lips, a lonely ship of a voice floating above and along the river roar of rush hour- lending the traffic din an accidental harmony.He sees me seeing him and shoots me a wink as wide as his smile and he raises his voice just a little louder for me to hear. I snap my fingers into a gun and wink back, his voice washes over me, I hear something about Love and something about Jesus, but I'm not listening to the words, no, it's all in the tone,it's like he's tapping into some primal memory of the first songs of the world and channeling it through some place deep within him that has not been made hard by the passing of the days. He drifts into the traffic and the cars buzz and fire around him like runaway rockets and he crosses through them like he was invulnerable. Like the song would protect him, the song fading softer and softer with his growing distance, flowing back under the street rhythm rush to guide him home safe.
It's getting dark now. Sundown in November hits just shy of five. And like a little kid spying on his hidden Christmas gifts, the skyline peeks over the housing projects lined with rows of trees from an age of golden hopes,skyscrapers glowing with the last blaze of day under cotton candy clouds that don't seem to drift casting tangerine & violet shadows that shift and play across the windows and under a sunless sky those trees striptease off their leaves and it rains down with shades of flames spread across the concrete gray.
Then it comes with the rumbling of a distant storm.
A banshee call off the horn of the passing CSX & Union Pacific freight.
Listen!
You can hear the history of our city in the engine roar across those tracks. My little railroad city built over a hundred and fifty years ago on the red clay earth;a baby of a city compared to her distant cousins across the world, arrogant and young with a chip on her shoulder- a frontier town built off Fort Peachtree, wildchild Americans armed and bible drunk staring down the bluff of the great western horizon. Hatched out of the railway nest of steel engine dragons, tamed monsters of steams of coal that flew out across the dream land of unknown America, their iron flight taking them across the wide grain oceans of the midwest, migrating under cold stars of wide mountains of the open North billowing up black smoke into the falling snow, where they slept briefly in gentle small towns where children counted them in wonder and woke to boast of travelers tales in the coastal cities that fed them raw fire and supplies. Only to return back here to Terminus, to Marthasville, to Atlanta to nest and feed their steel cargo bellies and when full, burst back into the waiting night of a dreaming nation. Atlanta that was once Terminus- the forgotten God of boundaries & maps. Atlanta a city named by the chief engineer of Georgia Railroad, abreviated from "Atlantica-Pacifica",once again the binding power of cartography evoked to connect two oceans together by the blood lines of locomotives in the body of a growing nation. Atlanta whose railway commerce created- " herds of unruly and vicious boys who infest the streets of the city ... by day and night, especially on the Sabbath, to the great annoyance of (the) citizens..." the dire warnings of the infant Fulton County Grand Jury, echoed words of concern in a city distinquished by fire & riot while down the block from me is MLK blvd- where beligerence and angry 'herds of unruly and vicious boys' still lurk, eternal predators of a state built by prisoners.Atlanta whose great fire began with a sabotaging of the ammo railcars, ignited by Confederate bullets and ordinace a city that would rather burn than be conquered. Atlanta my Phoniex city rebuilt and regenerated by her fleet of BlackDragon Freights pulling your wounded streets into the 20th century one long slow mile at a time.
I open my eyes.
The "Magpie" is honking from his new ride. I snap out of it and hop in.
I roll down his window and kill the radio quickly, one last listen, one last chance to place in memory the passing engine lullaby. Freeze the song in the ear. Lock & listen.
It's getting dark now. Sundown in November hits just shy of five. And like a little kid spying on his hidden Christmas gifts, the skyline peeks over the housing projects lined with rows of trees from an age of golden hopes,skyscrapers glowing with the last blaze of day under cotton candy clouds that don't seem to drift casting tangerine & violet shadows that shift and play across the windows and under a sunless sky those trees striptease off their leaves and it rains down with shades of flames spread across the concrete gray.
Then it comes with the rumbling of a distant storm.
A banshee call off the horn of the passing CSX & Union Pacific freight.
Listen!
You can hear the history of our city in the engine roar across those tracks. My little railroad city built over a hundred and fifty years ago on the red clay earth;a baby of a city compared to her distant cousins across the world, arrogant and young with a chip on her shoulder- a frontier town built off Fort Peachtree, wildchild Americans armed and bible drunk staring down the bluff of the great western horizon. Hatched out of the railway nest of steel engine dragons, tamed monsters of steams of coal that flew out across the dream land of unknown America, their iron flight taking them across the wide grain oceans of the midwest, migrating under cold stars of wide mountains of the open North billowing up black smoke into the falling snow, where they slept briefly in gentle small towns where children counted them in wonder and woke to boast of travelers tales in the coastal cities that fed them raw fire and supplies. Only to return back here to Terminus, to Marthasville, to Atlanta to nest and feed their steel cargo bellies and when full, burst back into the waiting night of a dreaming nation. Atlanta that was once Terminus- the forgotten God of boundaries & maps. Atlanta a city named by the chief engineer of Georgia Railroad, abreviated from "Atlantica-Pacifica",once again the binding power of cartography evoked to connect two oceans together by the blood lines of locomotives in the body of a growing nation. Atlanta whose railway commerce created- " herds of unruly and vicious boys who infest the streets of the city ... by day and night, especially on the Sabbath, to the great annoyance of (the) citizens..." the dire warnings of the infant Fulton County Grand Jury, echoed words of concern in a city distinquished by fire & riot while down the block from me is MLK blvd- where beligerence and angry 'herds of unruly and vicious boys' still lurk, eternal predators of a state built by prisoners.Atlanta whose great fire began with a sabotaging of the ammo railcars, ignited by Confederate bullets and ordinace a city that would rather burn than be conquered. Atlanta my Phoniex city rebuilt and regenerated by her fleet of BlackDragon Freights pulling your wounded streets into the 20th century one long slow mile at a time.
I open my eyes.
The "Magpie" is honking from his new ride. I snap out of it and hop in.
I roll down his window and kill the radio quickly, one last listen, one last chance to place in memory the passing engine lullaby. Freeze the song in the ear. Lock & listen.
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no subject
on 2004-11-19 05:25 pm (UTC)Thanks
on 2004-11-19 05:44 pm (UTC)your always taking the scenic route- and being a writer ( even of my poor quality) it's food for thought and fuel for the page. I'm much obliged for the feedback as always catwalk.
Re: Thanks
on 2004-11-19 08:24 pm (UTC)i get a little annoyed occasionally with the fact that i am usually the driver in my escapades,
mostly because i don't get to appreciate/evaluate the scenery.