"Roganville! Roganville! Don't Forget Your Shoes and Grapes!" - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The conductor calls out:

“Roganville! Roganville! Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes!”

The Doodle Bug rattles on the Santa Fe
Through cut-over woods and hot sunset fields
From Kirbyille, where they have a traffic light
And a picture show, and they don’t milk cows

Oh, don’t forget your shoes and sack of grapes
A brand-new shirt from Mixson’s store, for church
The memory of a soda at City Drug
And city kids, who wear shoes all the time

I’m going to live in the city someday

But for now

The Doodle-Bug rattles on the Santa Fe

Kirbyville - The Santa Fe Depot - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Kirbyville - The Santa Fe Depot

I loved to sit and watch the trains go by
As they blew smoke and steam into the sky

Or sometimes paused beneath the water tower
And sat there on the siding for an hour

The crew in overalls to the café
Hamburgers and coffee most every day

They swaggered back along our old Main Street
Important working men with schedules to meet

The whistle blew, the steam escaped, the train
Breathed heavily, and lurched and clanked to gain

Escape from our small town, then down the line
A tunnel through forests of oak and pine –

In dreams of boyhood, through memory’s eye
I love to sit and watch the trains go by

Magdalena, New Mexico