05/24/2026
Thank you Billy Blackman you need to come visit us at the Greensboro Depot Railroad Museum. We would love to have you come talk with us!
Somewhere between Port St. Joe and River Junction, the old man sang to us.
“Up and down this road I go
Skippin’ and dodging a .44
Hey man, won’t you line ’um…huh!
Hey man, won’t you line ’um…huh!”
I was once a Gandy Dancer.
There were only a few of us white boys on a crew made up mostly of Black men working the Extra Gang—the men responsible for keeping the Apalachicola Northern Railroad high-ballin’ from Port St. Joe to River Junction, near Chattahoochee, Florida.
Track workers across the country became known as Gandy Dancers, maybe because of the tools they used, maybe because of the way they moved in rhythm while lining track. Either way, I was one of them for five years.
One of our jobs was realigning track knocked, squeezed, and pushed out of place by tons and tons of freight cars pounding the rails twice a day.
We had a machine that could do the work. But most of the time we were “here” and the machine was “there.”
So we did it by hand.
With 20-pound steel bars called lining bars.
The track smelled like creosote, hot iron, diesel smoke, and dust ground fine enough to taste.
There were six of us—powerful men who did what they had to do because back home there were mouths to feed.
But a railroad is hard to move sideways, even a little. I don’t care how strong you are or how hungry your baby is, that work is tough.
Still, you can move a railroad with six men and one old man to sing them a song.
Twenty feet away, straddling one rail with one eye closed as if aiming a 39-foot gun barrel bolted to the next one and the next one and the next one, stood Mr. Homer, the foreman.
“QUARTER HEAD!”
“QUARTER BACK!”
“CENTER!”
That told us where the track needed a nudge—a quarter-rail ahead of the joint, a quarter-rail behind it, or halfway between two joints.
Then the old man gathered us up.
I don’t remember his name, but I remember him. He was as thin and tough as one of those lining bars we carried. He had white stubble around his mouth, stained Beech-Nut brown from to***co juice, and he hunched just a little because years of hard work hadn’t broken him.
Just bent him a little.
When Mr. Homer called the spot, half the crew stuck their lining bars under one rail and half under the other.
Then the old man started singing.
We rapped the rails with our bars, keeping time.
“I don’t know but I’ve been told
Susie has a jelly roll
I don’t know…huh!
But I’ve been told…huh!
Susie has…huh!
A jelly roll…huh!”
And on every “huh,” he leaned in the direction he wanted that railroad to move.
And we pulled.
All at once.
All that muscle, rhythm, sweat, backbone, and hunger came together in one hard pull.
And the railroad moved.
“Hey boy, won’t ’cha line ’um…huh!
Hey boy, won’t ’cha line ’um…huh!”
Little by little, the rails and crossties—and sometimes it seemed like the whole world—moved until Mr. Homer hollered, “WHOA!”
Everything stopped.
Then came another call.
“QUARTER BACK!”
The old man dragged the wooden handle of a spike maul across the rail, marking our move for the foreman.
“RIGHT THERE!”
He tapped the rail with that handle, and we gathered around the tap.
Then came the music.
The cadence.
The rap of steel against steel.
The “huh.”
And all at once, six men became one man.
And the railroad moved again.
Sometimes the old man sang his own version of the St. Louis Blues.
“I got the St. Louis Blues…huh!
I’m just as blue as I can be…huh!
I’ve got the St. Louis Blues…huh!
I’m just blue as I can be…huh!”
I was lucky to have been part of that history.
I would not trade those five years for a gold-plated nine-pound hammer.
Not even if you threw in a gold spike to sweeten the deal.
No regrets.
I take that back.
I do have one.
I regret that I never took time, somewhere between Port St. Joe and River Junction, to record that rail-thin, lining-bar-tough, to***co-stained old man singing his way up and down the track.
A quarter head.
A quarter back.
And a whole railroad moving to his song.
* * * *
You can hear and see Gandy Dancers at work here:
https://youtu.be/nIMBOEWOTMA
