Train in the Distance

Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance
Everybody thinks it's true

Eons and epochs ago when I was a freshman music major at a smallish Western Pennsylvania college a few of us, on warm Spring nights, would lay in the grass on the hill behind Cogswell Hall, the music building. We would talk of nothing and everything and then listen for the passing train’s whistle. We’d debate the chord structure. What was it exactly?

Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance
Everybody thinks it's true

I can’t bring my chord debating pals' names to mind -- not even their faces. The scent of the evening April meadow, the open, questing air of our conversations, that intangible, ghostly whistle, the rumble of steel wheels on rails as the train passed by somewhere in the distance -- these have stayed with me like a gently smiling Mona Lisa of memory.

Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance
Everybody thinks it's true
What is the point of this story
What information pertains
The thought that life could be better
Is woven indelibly
Into our hearts
And our brains

As for the train’s chord -- what was it? Dunno but A major 6ths, C sharp diminished 7ths
and D sharp minors were some of the debated structures.

Paul Simon -- Train in the Distance