One Saturday morning last summer, I was sitting at the Tamworth Farmers Market with Darby the Beagle, listening to a jewel of our local culture, the Bakery Band, play. The pooch and I were carried together to a happy place by their swelling vocals and the bluegrassy blending vibrations of the strings of two guitars, a banjo and a standup bass.

They played a song about a train, and then a song about chickens, and then another song about a train, and…another song about chickens, prompting Peg, of the band, to comment on the number of songs they seemed to have on those two subjects. In contrast, I noticed that I didn’t have a single story about either. So, during a break I went up, thanked them for the music, and said I was feeling the call to write a story about a freight-hopping chicken.

(Image: Karen Arnold, publicdomainpictures.net)

Well, time passed, and I didn’t get to it. Then, earlier this month I got a call from someone who wanted to hire me to tell a story at a summer solstice campfire up the road in Jackson. “We’re focusing on the sun,” he told me. “We’ll sing “Here Comes the Sun” and other songs like that. Do you have any stories about the sun?”

I mentally scrolled through my active, archived, and prospective repertoire, and then went back to an imaginary index card without much written on it yet. “Well,” I said, “I’m working on this story about a rooster…”  I thought quickly. “He announces the sun every morning, but no one appreciates him, so he leaves the farm and travels around the country hopping freight trains. He sees the sun shining everywhere he goes, how it gives life to everything. Eventually, he comes home to the farm with a new appreciation of where he’s from and a new pride in the one job that’s his and his alone…” The story was on its way; “Rooster-Train” hadn’t gone anywhere in a year, but when it became “Rooster-Train-Sun” it sprung into the process of becoming.

Soon “Boxcar Alonzo, the Chanticleer of the Rails, the Rooster of Good Fortune” was riding the Boston and Albany line to a whole string of other evocatively named railroads, enduring heat, cold, hunger, and thirst, and encountering hoboes along the way with monikers like “Cactus Jack” and “Sidetrack Sal.” A bit of grounding in local lore and a few brushstrokes of Whitmanesque imagery, and it began to develop a satisfying fullness of flavor.

I look forward to telling you this tale, esteemed reader/listener, whenever our chosen modes of transportation should happen to bring us together. In the meantime, pay attention. Stories seem to be lying about like seeds, just waiting for the sun to find them!