On Track to Leave

Song 503: This week the playlist recognizes I'm Moving On by Hank Snow, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. During my single-digit years, my family visited the Ohio relatives every summer, and by the turn of the 1960s, as I approached my first double-digit year, I had gotten to know many of country music's biggest hits of that era and earlier, thanks to the impressive LP collection owned by my aunt and uncle. They let me and my older brother choose the spinners for their turntable, and we played this cut many times, since it appeared on one of their 33s of top country movers. Not long after the turn of the 1970s, Steppenwolf lead singer John Kay released a solo album called Forgotten Songs and Unsung Heroes that included his version of this tune, and it brought back some cherished memories from a decade or so earlier. I always had an interest in trains, due at least in part to the railroad line that ran close to the house I grew up in, so I had often seen That big eight-wheeler rollin' down the track and I had often heard That big loud whistle as it blew and blew. My aunt and uncle lived about as close to the B & O tracks as my own family did to the Lackawanna ones, and we all agreed that train sounds, even when they momentarily disturbed your sleep, invariably had a deeply-relaxing effect, so yes, Mr. Engineer take that throttle in hand.