A lonesome sound epitomizes life in America

By Calvin Palmer

One of the most evocative sounds of the American cityscape is that of a diesel locomotive sounding its horn as it approaches a railroad crossing.

A CSX locomotive. ©Calvin Palmer 2010. All Rights Reserved.

Since moving to the United States in 2000, I have lived in close proximity to the railroad both in Texas and now in Florida. Some people complain about the disruptive nature of the sound at night but I love it.

A train sounding out its presence in the dead of night makes me think of those film noir movies of the 1940s and 1950s. It conjures up images of Humphrey Bogart in a trench-coat or Robert Mitchum sporting a wide brimmed trilby and with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. It evokes Packard, De Soto and Hudson cars with their grinning chrome radiator grilles.

The sound of a locomotive’s horn also puts me in mind of a raft of songs, ranging from country to blues — covered later by rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s — Me and Bobby McGee; Mama Tried, with its opening line of “First thing I remember knowing was a lonesome whistle blowing”; Jimi Hendrix’s Hear My Train Comin’; and not forgetting the Grateful Dead’s Casey Jones.

Writing this piece just after midnight, the stillness of the night has been pierced several times by the sound of a train.

Sometimes, the sound is just one long haunting note. At other times, those engineers with a musical background add a few variations, as if to emulate the horn section of a rhythm and blues band or even a wah-wah effect. And it is easy to see that the wailing sound of a harmonica in many a blues standard has its origins in the sound of a train.

In America, freight trains are huge affairs usually pulled by two locomotives, sometimes four, and stretching more than a mile in length. Back in my train-spotting days, as a 10-year-old,  trains in Britain pulled by two locomotives, and I am talking about the days of steam, were known as “double-headers”. They were a rare sight but are commonplace in America, where everything is done on a bigger scale than anywhere else.

Freight cars stretch into the distance and there were plenty more of them to come. ©Calvin Palmer 2010. All Rights Reserved.

With the length of American freight trains, it is small wonder that it takes two locomotives to pull them and why the wait at a railroad crossing can take four to five minutes while a train rumbles past.

But to me that is all part and parcel of life in America. The railroad is what made the country great and why it assumes such a major theme in American popular culture.

And right on cue, as I round off this piece, the bell clangs at the railroad crossing and a locomotive’s horn blasts out a series of doleful notes as another train trundles through the Florida night.

Sidibe’s EPL performances gain Oscar nomination

By Calvin Palmer

When I first saw the name Sidibe among this year’s Oscar nominations, I thought someone had made a dreadful error. How could the Stoke City striker, Mamady “Mama”  Sidibe, possibly be considered for an acting award?

Then the awful truth dawned on me. Of course, he deserves to be nominated because it is quite obvious that he is not a football player but is simply playing a part week in week out in the English Premier League. The only trouble is that he plays it so badly.

Given that the Oscar nominations are made by Americans, they can hardly be expected to know the difference between a class footballer and the likes of Sidibe. Perhaps they should have checked his playing record.

Strikers in football are the equivalent of wide receivers in the NFL. They are the players who score goals, the equivalent of touchdowns in the NFL. Sidibe has 301 club and international appearances to his credit and has managed to score just 43 goals.

The current top scorer in the English Premier League is Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney. Rooney has 304 appearances for club and country during which he has scored 125 goals.

Stoke City legend John Ritchie played 358 games during his career and scored 169 goals.

The accepted strike rate for a top-class striker in football is one goal every two games. Rooney’s strike rate is 2.4, while Ritchie’s was 2.1.

Sidibe’s strike record is one goal every SEVEN games!

If only the Oscar nominating committee had done their homework or tuned into ESPN yesterday afternoon to see Sidibe “perform” in the 0-0 game between Sunderland and Stoke City. What they would have seen was a player who cannot control the ball or pass it to another player. Well, he can but it is usually to a member of the opposing team. And for all his 6 feet 4 inches, he failed to win a ball in the air.

A less charitable person would have been forgiven for thinking, what the hell is Sidibe doing playing in the English Premier League, supposedly the best league in the world?

Anwers on a postcard to Tony Pulis at the Britannia Stadium, Stoke-on-Trent, England, ST4 4EG.

Speaking of charity, I feel it would be a fitting gesture if the players and coaching staff of Sunderland AFC and Stoke City FC donated this week’s wages to the Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund. Yesterday’s game was not exactly the best advert ever for the “beautiful game”. In fact, it was downright ugly and that had nothing to do with Rory Delap’s appearance as a second-half substitute.

Stoke City’s Tuncay should be allowed to keep £100 of his weekly wage for providing the only moment of quality during the entire 94 minutes of play with his clever back heel to send Dean Whitehead clean through. Sadly, Whitehead drove the ball tamely at Sunderland goalkeeper Craig Gordon and was oblivious to players better placed to score.

Perhaps it was for the best – one of those players was Sidibe.

Restaurant owner serves up reasons for failure

By Calvin Palmer

It had been some time since my wife and I dined at the West Inn Cantina in the Avondale district of Jacksonville, Florida.

West Inn is on my list of “approved” restaurants because of its covered smoking section and, besides, it serves an excellent chicken tortilla soup — or rather it did.

We discovered on Saturday night that the restaurant has closed.

I was intrigued as to the reason and, for once, The Florida Times-Union provided the answer in a story it ran on December 17, 2009.

Co-owner Linda Spofford told the newspaper the restaurant was closing because of the downturn in the economy and a roadwork project that lasted seven months. The bar and liquor store will remain open.

“We’re not planning on closing down,” Linda said. “We’re staying here. We’re keeping all our restaurant equipment, too, so if things get better we have the option of reopening that.”

It turns out 20 employees were laid off just two weeks before Christmas.

“It’s been very devastating,” Linda said. “But with the economy and all that road construction — our road was closed for seven months — that just killed us.”

Those sound plausible reasons for closing the restaurant operation but something about them does not quite ring true.

Four other restaurants in close vicinity to the West Inn Cantina have been subjected to the same economic conditions and roadwork project. They are still going strong.

I will wager that a visit from Gordon Ramsay would have revealed the real reasons why the restaurant section of the West Inn Cantina has closed its doors and those home truths, and the manner of their delivery, would not have been particularly palatable for Linda Spofford.

For starters, based on my own experiences, the wait staff had little enthusiasm for either customers or the food on the menu. Welcoming smile, forget it. I gained the distinct impression that, simply by turning up at the door, I represented an imposition on their time.

In fact, the reason why it had been such a long time since our last visit to the West Inn Cantina was down to the uninterested wait staff. They couldn’t have cared less about us as a customers and it showed.

I am no culinary expert but imagine that Gordon Ramsay would have also found the menu to be somewhat lacking, apart from the chicken tortilla soup.

Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares airs regularly on BBC America and shows that many restaurateurs seem to be obvilious to their own faults and inhabit a fantasy land as far as their business is concerned.

It would appear that Linda Spofford shares this unfortunate and unbecoming trait.

Teacher jailed for sexual abuse of teenage boys

By Calvin Palmer

A teacher who groomed teenage boys for sex over a 20-year period was sentenced today at Portsmouth Crown Court to seven years in jail.

James Braid, 58, was found guilty of seven charges of multiple offences of indecent assault between 1982 and 2002.

Braid, who taught English and drama for 34 years at Bayhouse School, Gosport, Hampshire, would surround himself with vulnerable boys who had fallen victim to bullies, and they became known as Braid’s Bunch.

Braid earned the trust of parents by taking the boys on holiday to visit his relatives in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, or inviting them to his house for help with homework.

He gave the boys, all aged around 15, with alcohol, fizzy sweets and video games before abusing them.

Defense counsel Sarah Jones said Braid felt “profound shame” for what he had done.

Sentencing him, Judge Ian Pearson said: ‘This was the gross breach of trust by a teacher.

“There is no doubt you are a gifted and charismatic teacher but you used those skills to identify, to target and to groom vulnerable young boys.

“In my view you were and are a determined, deceitful predatory paedophile.”

Braid was also ordered to pay £31,300 pounds in legal costs, banned from working with children for life and must sign the sex offenders register.

In 1998, he was acquitted of groping a boy but these new allegations did not come to light until one victim, now in his 20s, broke down after a row with his girlfriend and dialled 999.

[Based on reports by The Daily Telegraph and The Portsmouth News.]