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Glad you like it! We can thank Russ Chandler for the sound quality, since he made the original live recording.

Thanks.

Greetings from New York City. Thank you, Dano. You can find more videos of Anne Price and myself, either singing together or separately, on my RUclips channel. You are also welcome to visit our respective websites, www.anneprice.com/ and www.stevesuffet.com/

Ace --> I was just thinking of you. Really. I mean it. As I was loading this video I saw the wonderful comment you made in 2017 about "Can You Hear That Steam Whistle Blow?," and I was about to send you an e-mail. So let me just say "thank you" this way. Are you anywhere near NYC? I'd love to see you in person after 50+ years. By the way, what would make "The Evergreen Line" a filk song? It doesn't have a fantasy, science fiction, or alternative reality theme. Or does it? I can even take you to places in Brooklyn where the asphalt laid down in 1984 has worn away thus exposing the tracks that were never taken up.

I live in New Jersey, near Sandy Hook. I developed some medical issues about this time last year, so my ability to socialize is slightly curtailed. If you do have my email address, please email me, so we can communicate more privately. (And, btw, a few of my online friends are filkers, but few in the NY area.)

It's an original filk, almost a parody of a certain type of classic railroad song ("The Rock Island Line is a mighty good road, The Rock Island Line is the road to ride...") And it does have a humorous element, in that a line that only existed to carry the dead to the graveyard is funny in a macabre way. (Well, at least it's not The Hellbound Train...).

@@purplealice --> OK, I get it. Thanks. Nevertheless, transporting coffins, either empty or filled, accounted for only a very small portion of the traffic. At first the Evergreen RR was 5 miles long, with its western terminus by the East River ferry at the foot of Greenpoint Avenue in Brooklyn. At that time it carried both passengers and freight. But as omnibus service and later streetcar lines became available, the Evergreen was truncated to 2 miles and restricted to carrying freight. Its customers were local businesses that included ice houses, lumber yards, construction supply companies, wholesale warehouses, and more. As trucking replaced the short line railways, the Evergreen, by then a branch of the LIRR, went into decline. By the time the LIRR took it out of service in 1984 it had only two customers left. Its companion short line, the Bushwick Branch of the LIRR, now operated by the New York & Atlantic Railway, still exists even though it has only one major customer, the Waste Management Corporation. It runs between Bushwick Terminal in Brooklyn and Fresh Pond Yard, the NY&A Railway hub, in Queens. I will now try to send you an e-mail.

Industrial freight is usually funny - like "The Rock Island Line" - "I got pigs.... I got all pig iron!" And if the only paying customer is a trash hauler, that's funny too ;-) I got your email, I'll answer it soon!

Ace --> Yes, I know. Have you looked at any of my videos of myself?

Yes, I have - they're all turning up on my "subscriptions" page. A few more came along after this one. (But could you please not use my non-internet name here? Thanks!)

Ace --> Done!

Thanks! Now that all my relatives are gone, only a very few people (my husband, some other people I've known since before the internet) use my original name any more - most of my friends in "real life" call me Ace.

Was Woody Guthrie your cousin? Guthrie wrote the lyrics, except for the verse about Trayvon Martin that I wrote. Woody adapted the tune from a Carter Family song called "Sad and Lonesome Day." The Carter Family in turn had adapted the tune from Blind Lemon Jefferson's song "Please See That My Grave Is Kept Clean." Jefferson apparently based his tune on an even earlier song, so who knows where the tune originally came from?