Highballin' the Love Train

How could the O'Jays know back then that the next stop was going to be the Southern Cone? They couldn't, of course: they were in the Old Paradigm.And the kids in this video? Well, the tee shirts on the girls say it all, don't they? "Nerds." Sigh.

Look at that room!

The color of the wall: bilious green, something their folks must have picked up at a Sherwin-Williams get-it-off-the-premises sale. The tacky posters, the flimsy curtains. The Love Train got derailed on its way through here.

The kids are spirited, I'll give them that, but the guys would have been prime candidates for "pantsing" back in my day, and the girls... well, we won't speak of them. But their behavior is not the sort that belongs in the street.

See, the world has turned nasty, and in the kind of neighborhood where the pavement ends, the street-light-vee hits the vanishing point and there are no more pachinko parlors, well, in those places, these kids could find themselves face down in a toilet bowl until the bubbles stop breaking the surface and the Love Train is a lonely whistle in the distance: Choo-Choo-Woo-Woo Bye-Bye.

Enough of that! Let's think happy thoughts! Let's get on board the Love Train! I mean, if you miss it, I feel sorry for you and, well, this whole train meme is kind of something you should, you know, like, "get into to."

We will be examining over the course of this week the ever-more-impelling urge that should be rising within readers to, well, "Git on bo' the Love Train" as it morphs into the Trans-Andean Express, the Traslasierra Streamliner, the Patagonia Powerhouse... Imagine yourself in a 50s vintage pullman dining car, linen on the table, heavy flatware flanking porcelain plates, white-jacketed waiters, clickety-clackety, clickety-clackety, wibbledy-wobbledy, landscape rollin' on by, smell that bacon frying, and you're heading south, south, ever further south, the rat race falling further behind, becoming nothing more than a hazy memory because you're on the Love Train, highballin' past dusty hamlets, whistle Doppler-shift-hooting like a barn owl caught in a wind tunnel... Love Train comin' on through!

Take a close look at the links on this page, think about the metaphorical train you're riding now. It's time to get on board the Love Train! Believe me, if you miss this Love Train, I feel sorry, sorry for you.


But not as sorry as you'll begin feeling sooner than you might think.