Narration #3 (Same Train, A Different Time) - Merle Haggard

Jimmie rodgers had a great affection for the railroads and the men who

Ran them and during the years he worked on the roads he spent most of

The time with the new orleans and northeastern lines which ran between

His home town of meridian mississippi and new orleans

And jimmie became able to talk in the language of the railroaders

Like such expressions as hog-head and hot-box quil ball in the jack skinner

Always filled his conversation and he wrote songs about these men and

Their language

The mule skinner was usually a man with a mule who hired himself

And his mule out by the day to do whatever had to be done

He might drag ties and rails or he might just move freshly cut timber from

The right of way the mule skinner was the subject of one of jimmie

Rodgers’s most popular blue yodles…