The Way, Way Back Machine

When I was a mere young'un I would spend time at my grandfather's house up the street. He and my aunt had a collection of 78 rpm records that intrigued me. (This was the late 50s.) Since my grandfather was a railroad man, one of the records was "The Freight Wreck at Altoona", a song about a train crash at the Horseshoe Curve near Altoona, PA, west of us.

For years I wondered about the song, but it was last week that I decided to do some digging on the Internet. Well, ladies and gentlemen, here it is. Yep, I found it on You Tube. It was but a moment and I was transported back over 50 years as the sound of a real phonograph record came from the mists of time.

Vernon Dalhart was the artist- and I find on Wikipedia that he was one of the true pioneers of developing country and western music in the early 20th Century, recording the hit, "Wreck of the '97" (another of my favorites.)

Anywhere, here it is. Be transported back to a time many years ago. Hear the static on the record and remember the excitement that sound would have engendered in people who weren't as used to such things as we are now.