Thursday, December 6, 2018

Here's to daddy Claxton

Or today, President George H.W. Bush.
The Wabash Cannonball has been sung by many different artists over the years. From Roy Acuff and Johnny Cash, to Leon Russell, to the kids at Kansas State.
Reading, tonight, about the final procession for President Bush, and how he was transported from the last funeral in Houston to his final resting place aboard Union Pacific Engine number 4141, the image stirred, in my memory, long ago lines from that song;
Here's to daddy Claxton may his name forever stand
And always be remembered throughout the land
When his earthly days are over and the curtains round him fall
We'll carry him home to bury him on the Wabash Cannonball.
Now, none of the lyrics sites I checked, contained those exact lines, and I don't remember the artist whose recording my parents had, but certainly, it has been a long time since a President has been transported via rail to his place of burial.  Forty nine years in fact. The last President carried to rest on a train was Dwight D. Eisenhower. While some sites like to claim that Lincoln was the First President carried to rest on a train, the actual honor belongs to John Quincy Adams who died in 1846.
Eight Presidents have had funeral trains. The locomotive used today was built to honor Bush 41, and he had the privilege of riding on it shortly after it was built in 2005. The locomotive is one of only six locomotives built for UP that is not clad in their traditional Armour Yellow, and the unit has traveled through every state served by Union Pacific, twenty six in all.


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