As I work at the computer, I'm listening to the old-time radio detective show Let George Do It. In the episode, detective George Valentine and his assistant Brooksie are meeting with client Casey Foster in the desert on a dark evening.
The voice of Casey Foster: I want to show you something. The most beautiful view I've, I've ever seen. Eh, get out, Miss Brooks. Come over here.
My mind fills in the blanks, watching Brooksie get out of the car and follow George to where Foster stands in the gloom of the radio night.
George: View? View of what, the black shadows of black sand in the middle of a black desert?
[Coyote sound effect]
George: Ah. We're going coyote hunting, eh?
Foster: Over there. In the moonlight. There. By the old, abandoned siding. See?
The voice of Foster is old-time radio actor Junius Matthews, one of the most distinct, most OTR voices out there, the epitome of a cracked, old codger—and his character is, well, a cracked, old codger, so in love with trains that he's endeavoring to buy a railroad for a million dollars.
Brooksie: A freight train!
Foster (voice full of excitement and reverence): That's the number two engine. Makes the night run.
[Coyote sound effect]
George: Ah. We're going coyote hunting, eh?
Foster: Over there. In the moonlight. There. By the old, abandoned siding. See?
The voice of Foster is old-time radio actor Junius Matthews, one of the most distinct, most OTR voices out there, the epitome of a cracked, old codger—and his character is, well, a cracked, old codger, so in love with trains that he's endeavoring to buy a railroad for a million dollars.
Brooksie: A freight train!
Foster (voice full of excitement and reverence): That's the number two engine. Makes the night run.
And it's just a moment. My mind says, wow, what a profound, poetic little statement! The train makes the night run. Like streaming through the dark, a train, in all its mystique and wonder, can power the night, can bring it to life.
Then: wait.
That's not what he's saying with that line. He's saying that this train runs at night.
Ah. Well. I let the episode stream onward, and I enjoy it as it goes, but I leave that line uncorrected in my head. Because, oh, how pretty it is when you hear it wrong, and it's always worth taking poetry wherever you find it.
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That episode ("This Ain’t No Way to Run a Railroad") of Let George Do It can be found on the podcast The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio archived here.
By the way, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that my old-time-radio-themed novel Who Killed One the Gun? can be preordered now.
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