“Nighttime on the City of New Orleans. Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee. Half way home, we’ll be there by morning. Through the Mississippi darkness. Rolling down to the sea” (“City of New Orleans” — by Steve Goodman).

Those of you that have been paying attention know that the Amtrak train, known as the City of New Orleans, no longer follows the daytime schedule, as chronicled by Steve Goodman. However, we are not going to let that get in the way of good story telling. Memphis is still “half way home” to New Orleans from Chicago and, after several days of learning history and observing debauchery (historic debauchery?), my Intrepid Traveling Companion and I bid adieu to Memphis and its barbecue, riverboats and Beale Street Blues.

At 6:30 a.m., we boarded the train and on down the rail we rode. Drinking our morning coffee, we watched as America slid past our glass domed, upper-level observation car. We began this leg of our journey alongside the legendary Old US-61, known as the Blues Highway. Highway 61 was once the primary route heading north out of New Orleans, and many early travelers of this historic road played a significant part in the northern migration of the Blues (and, someday, should be the subject of one of these essays).

Soon, the train (and the rails beneath it) moved away from the Mighty Mississippi River to follow a path on the east side of the Mississippi Delta — an elongated ellipse of fertile farmland in northwest Mississippi, situated between the Yazoo and Mississippi Rivers. Cotton is still king in this part of the country, and the Delta looks almost unchanged from the days of share croppers, following the Civil War. Unfortunately, our view from the comfortable swivel seats in the relaxed and spacious observation car was not of abundant white puffs promulgating the cotton fields, but of rich, muddy silt deposited from massive (and still ongoing) spring floods. Usually, spring floods do not last into July (and beyond) — but they sure did this year.

Eventually, the tracks (and the train above them) settled onto a path that gently meandered along the general course of the very meandering Tallahatchie River. Yes, this is the very river, crossed by the very bridge Roberta Lee Streeter sang about in the 1967 song, “Ode to Billie Joe.” Of course, most people (older than 50) remember Ms. Streeter as Bobbie Gentry, and a steel span structure has replaced the old wooden bridge from which Billie Joe McAllister jumped. The bridge carried Sunny Side Road across the muddy waters of the Tallahatchie into the booming megalopolis of Money, Mississippi (population: “less than 100”). Why did I tell you a story about a bridge in the middle of a story about a train? Because the City of New Orleans rolls right past the famed Tallahatchie Bridge, making it easily viewed from the observation car — something, that simply cannot be done from an Interstate Highway off — ramp. When you ride the rails, you get to see the best of the country (and the worst of the cities).

The aforementioned spring floods were not only bad for the cotton crop, but for train trestles as well. In Jackson, Mississippi, due to damaged tracks from high water, my Intrepid Traveling Companion and I had to switch from the ease and comfort of rail travel to riding in a bus for our final leg to New Orleans. I have ridden on busses before and many of them were quite comfortable — this one was not. This was an Amtrak bus, I suspect, purposely designed to make riding in the coach section of the train seem luxurious. The seats on this bus made the seats on Jet Blue seem like cruising in a Barcalounger. However, three hours and one aching posterior later, we pulled into the Amtrak station in The Big Easy, ready for our newest round of adventures.

Check back here, next week, and I will try to remember a few things about what happened on Bourbon Street — if I can (things are still a little fuzzy).