Uploaded November 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Day 228 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
Sandburg writes about "Casey Jones" and "Mama Have You Heard the News": "At Dodge City, Kansas, in the Santa Fe railway station grass and flower plot, stands a plain memorial, a wooden post painted white with the reminder in black letters: Lest We Forget. Fastened to the post is an old time, cast-iron Link-and-Pin, the slaughterer, the crepe hanger, the maker of one-armed men peddling lead pencils on payday night, the predecessor of the beneficent Safety Coupler. . . .
The laughter of the railroad man at death and mutilation runs through many of his songs. The promise of a wooden kimono, a six foot bungalow, is with him on every trip whether he's on a regular run or the extra list, and no matter what his seniority. . . .
Verses sung by railroad men were printed in that remarkably American periodical, The Railroad Man's Magazine, under the editorship of Robert Davis. . . .
Then came the sheet music version, widely popular. Lumberjacks, college girls, aviators, and doughboys, have made versions of their own. . . .
Songs are like people, animals, plants. They have genealogies, pedigrees, thoroughbreds, cross-breeds, mongrels, strays, and often a strange love-child. . . .
This tune ("Mama Have You Heard the News") is one notated in Ohio by Josephine Winston of the University of North Carolina."
Day 228 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
Sandburg writes about "Casey Jones" and "Mama Have You Heard the News": "At Dodge City, Kansas, in the Santa Fe railway station grass and flower plot, stands a plain memorial, a wooden post painted white with the reminder in black letters: Lest We Forget. Fastened to the post is an old time, cast-iron Link-and-Pin, the slaughterer, the crepe hanger, the maker of one-armed men peddling lead pencils on payday night, the predecessor of the beneficent Safety Coupler. . . .
The laughter of the railroad man at death and mutilation runs through many of his songs. The promise of a wooden kimono, a six foot bungalow, is with him on every trip whether he's on a regular run or the extra list, and no matter what his seniority. . . .
Verses sung by railroad men were printed in that remarkably American periodical, The Railroad Man's Magazine, under the editorship of Robert Davis. . . .
Then came the sheet music version, widely popular. Lumberjacks, college girls, aviators, and doughboys, have made versions of their own. . . .
Songs are like people, animals, plants. They have genealogies, pedigrees, thoroughbreds, cross-breeds, mongrels, strays, and often a strange love-child. . . .
This tune ("Mama Have You Heard the News") is one notated in Ohio by Josephine Winston of the University of North Carolina."
