From: jcf@world.std.com (Joseph C Fineman)
Subject: Slow Train thru GA: Ruminations & queries
Summary: A detailed rumination on "Slow Train through Georgia" by Norman Blake
Keywords: Blake, Norman; Slow Train; bums; English
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 03:57:58 GMT

This is from my journal, 18 November 1986.  I thought it might amuse
  some of you.

        Down by the county bridge

Puts it in the country right away.  He has already escaped, tho he isn't
  home yet.

        The gondolas roll,
        Taking down to Birmingham
        That dirty half-slag coal.

A lot of detail & distaste in 3 lines.  He doesn't like cities --
  especially, I guess, Birmingham, which "dirty" is meant to slip over
  onto.  (Agee called it an "incurable sore".)  It was named after the
  English Birmingham in the hope, which was fulfilled, that it would be a
  steel town, so that's probably what the coal is for.  It isn't even good
  coal, and it's coming from pretty far away (where from? there seems to be
  some Appalachian country in northern Georgia); maybe putting a steel town
  there wasn't good judgment.

        I should let her move me on,
        Come sunshine, rain or drought,

An ill-assorted trio, being an overlap of two familiar pairs (rain or
  shine, rain or drought), with the rain bad in one & good in the other.
  However, it does provide a rhyme, to the accuracy required for this sort
  of song.

        'Cause just like the circle says,
        Southern serves the South.

Extends the alliteration in the trademark.

        Hardships and troubles,
        Don't you know I've had some.
        Getting older every day,
        I'm a fair-weather bum.

I love those two lines, I suppose because I am getting older, and because I
  like the word "bum" with its mixture of contempt & affection.  [24nv86:
  No doubt attenuated amongst the masses since the Dodgers left Brooklyn.]
  "Fair-weather bum" must be a stock phrase.  But what kind of person is
  that?  What do fair-weather bums do in foul weather?  Get a job in the
  city?

        Let me tell you, good people,

A conventional address in Southern songs -- perhaps a mark of gentility, or
  a minstrel's obsequious gesture?

        It's just about time
        To catch a slow train through Georgia
        And ease my worried mind.

Time & mind!  They must be rhymed in dozens of songs.  They are (in my
  small experience) generally overworked in Southern speech.  At first,
  noticing their prevalence in the blues, I thought:  They are cherished
  because they are the only abstract words in those people's vocabulary.
  But that is a snobbish guess.  C---, who came from Georgia, used to use
  the words "on my mind" with a peculiar emotional weight, as if they were
  supposed to make some sort of impression.  And I think the phrases "make
  time" and "beat [someone's] time" in the sexual sense are of Southern
  (black?) origin.

Are there perhaps dialects in which "time" & "mind" do rhyme exactly?  I
  think I have heard pronunciations in which the final consonants are
  reduced to a nasalization.  It is amusing that if the distantly related
  Latin stem "ment-" had survived as a word in French, it would rhyme with
  "temps", and indeed the pair would make a pretty good match for their
  counterparts in such a dialect, except for the length of the vowel.

        Forty miles an hour,
        She's a-moving down the line:
        Greasy rails,

Why are they greasy?

                      red clay trails
        Through the lonely pine.

It always breaks my heart to see a trail from a train.  More than people
  themselves or any of their other works, it reminds me of the vast
  multiplicity of all our little worlds, which are lives to ourselves but
  only scenes to each other.

        Any place where the sunshine falls
        Is where I long to be,
        And let that sunshine southern special
        Roll me to the sea.

I suspect he's about my age, or maybe 10 years older.

        I wish I was living day to day
        Somewhere down the track.
        Come on gal, my old pal,
        You know we'll not

Not "we won't".  Didn't know there were Americans who talked like that.

                           look back.
        I'll take down this old guitar,
        I'll play it every day,
        And let that slow train through Georgia
        Roll my blues away.

                --Norman Blake

-- 
        Joe Fineman             jcf@world.std.com
        239 Clinton Road        (617) 731-9190
        Brookline, MA 02146