If you're from Pittsburgh, South Hills.

Dormont was one of those places you may have heard of.

But unless you live there or have relatives living there, you probably do not know much about the origin of this community that is rich in culture, history, and friendly faces.

If that's the case, prepare yourself for a walk through time.

The legacy of Dormont.

What we now know is Dormont, like so much of the rest of this part of the country, started out as being land in the hands of local Indian tribes.

And then in the mid 1700s, land was purchased as part of the Fort Stanwick, deal with the Indians.

And the land was then, divided up, in the late 1700s into various territories and given out as, land grants and things of that nature.

And the boundaries kept changing as these land grants, changed hands and new areas were developed.

What we now know is state lines, county lines, whatever.

Those actually changed quite a few times.

And at one time, the area that is now Dormont was actually part of the state of Virginia.

It's interesting.

Dormont is, kind of a made up name, and it comes from the French, Mont dOr, mountain of gold.

The name was, given to it by the local business community at that time, the Chamber of Commerce that that were developing with the local businesses and the, word has it that they saw Dormont as just that, a mountain of gold.

There was so many abundant opportunities here for development and for enrichment.

Those with more romantic inclinations, insist that the Mountain of Gold designation, refers to our brilliant sunsets and sunrises, which we get here with the terrain and the ways, As the sun rises and sets on either side of the burl.

We get some spectacular, light shows in, in the early morning or in the late evening.

Hills just here, just kind of light up like they are made of gold.

Back in the turn of the century, there was, just an explosion of opportunity in Pittsburgh.

There was the, all the industry.

It was Silicon Valley of the day.

And at that time, Dormont was, was supposed to be eventually annexed by the city of Pittsburgh.

It was the first municipality outside of the limits of the City of Pittsburgh.

And original plans were to, eventually annex it to the rest of the city.

But once the area started developing, Dormont kind of developed the personality of its own, and it decided it it didn't want to be part of the City of Pittsburgh, it wanted to maintain its independence.

In the early 1900s, a trolley tunnel was was created through Mount Washington that brought the trolleys to Dormont.

And it became very much more accessible to people from the city.

And then the big thing, of course, was in in 1924 when the Liberty Tunnels were opened.

And I think because of the, availability of easy access to the city, that it just sort of mushroomed and a lot of people just like getting out on this side of the, I'll call it the mountain, because, Pittsburgh was very smoky.

And to come through the side of the mountain, why the smoke stayed over there and the people lived over here, and they were happy.

When the borough was first incorporated in 1909, it was approximately a little over 1000 residents in the area.

What had once been farmland is now becoming desirable residential areas, away from smog and the congestion of the cities.

And the population just started mushrooming.

And by 1920, that had increased to about 6000.

And then by the time you get into 1930, when even after the development of the Liberty Tunnels and the further expansion of public transportation, Dormont had close to 12 or 13,000 residents, and a lot of businesses started springing up along the West Liberty and Potomac corridors.

So, Potomac originally was known as Banks Hill Avenue, was later changed to Potomac Avenue.

But that was kind of the heart of the borough.

The surrounding streets were starting to fill up with housing, much of it very unique as far as architecture and affordability of it.

And it drew a lot of people from the city out to this borough of Dormont the very first suburban community south of the city.

Hey, what was that song they used to sing?

Hooray for Hollywood.

That screwy, ballyhooey Hollywood.

Where any office boy or young mechanic can be a panic.

With just a good-looking pan And any shop girl Can be a top girl.

If she pleases a tired businessman There is some documentation that shows my granddad, H. Justin Brown was in the entertainment business.

And I think what we figured out is that the Hollywood Theater, when, when the, the plans were up and made available, my granddad bid on it and they won the bid to build the Hollywood Theater.

This theater along with a number of other buildings.

in Dormont was built by the Brown Brothers Builders.

And that was my grandfather and his brother.

And then my dad, went into the business.

My granddad was one that realized we're in a steel town.

Why wouldn't we use steel in building a residential property?

So they brought what they called junior i-beam, and to secure in the foundations and the first floor structures of a residential.

There's a lot of steel in this building.

He used steel because it was plentiful in this area.

I don't think it was as expensive because you didn't have to ship it.

It was high quality people didn't didn't rush their work, and and they did a great job.

And I think that's why you have a building like the Hollywood Theater.

It's just such a grand structure.

At one time, Dormont had three theaters.

The Delpman was on West Liberty.

You had the Hollywood Theater up on Potomac Avenue and the South Hills Theater on West Liberty Avenue.

You know, Dormont was our entertainment center.

We lived in Greentree, that did not have a movie theater.

So we would come to Dormont for movies.

My parents would drop me off at a close friend's house, and we'd walk from his house on Crosby Avenue up to the Hollywood or to the South Hills, depending on what movie we wanted to see.

And I remember going to the South Hills, and this was in the late 50s, early 60s, and there was a ticket taker.

They had ticket takers then, in fact, in the Dormont Historical Society in the lobby of the building.

The box office of the South Hills Theater is there.

And I remember that box, I remember going up to it and paying your 35 or $0.50.

I often think about the South Hills Theater, which is gone.

I missed that because we were half a block away.

Many times my wife and I would just eat dinner and we say, let's go to a movie and walk up the street half a block and and go to the South Hills Theater.

And we been to the Hollywood also.

But the South Hills a little bit closer to where I live.

And we went there many, many times.

As the business community developed and Dormont became a center for for commerce in the South Hills, they had a number of pharmacies, grocery stores, meat markets, bakeries, a number of them still operating today.

For instance, the Potomac Bakery has been in basically in the same family since 1927.

The bakery was started, by another family by the name of Paull P-A-U-L-L and then my parents, opened the bakery in 1927 for themselves.

It was a dream come true for them.

They were both immigrants.

They were both from Germany.

But they didn't meet until they came here.

They were married here in Pittsburgh and then loved the bakery, loved Dormont, and loved everything about their new life here in America.

My first job at age five was to pick strawberries, and then from there I graduated to packing eggs.

Eggs used to come in a big carton, and then I would put them in the dozen boxes.

And I came to the bakery in 1954 out of the Marine Corps.

He thought he was really going to come and and just be like other bakeries that he thought of, like usually big businesses that He'd come and and and just make sure everything went right.

I thought I was going to become a manager.

He really did, just as my parents did.

Just as our son is doing.

He really dug in.

And that means you work the baker hours.

Well, my job was to take every job that anybody didn't show up for the day, then that that was my job.

And pretty soon I got acquainted with every job.

It was something because I had no experience at all in the baking industry.

And the lucky thing we were always closed on Sunday, so we always had Sunday off.

But the rest of the six days were committed to the bakery and then we had eight children, so that helped feed the eight children too.

We would go in and cut cookies out and bake them, and the family was all involved.

And you can imagine when you have all eight of them in there, they're all running around doing something.

But it was we had a good time.

So I could remember taking walks with my parents down Potomac Avenue.

We would hit up G.C.

Murphy's and theyd buy me a toy for a couple dollars.

And then afterwards, we always took a trip into Potomac Bakery and I'd get a cookie.

And that was those were the best days.

Whenever you get a toy and a cookie on one street right up from where you live.

Oh, the favorite things that I liked at the bakery were, cream puffs, oh, pie.

The the cream pies, fruit pies, the double fudge chocolate cake, brownies.

Everybody knows Potomac Bakery and the brownies.

Oh, I do love the brownies.

They are, everyone raves about them, and they are the best that I've ever eaten.

Over the years, as surrounding communities have lost populations, Dormont has been relatively stable.

And because of that, we've been able to maintain a relatively viable commercial area as well as a very desirable residential area.

At the same time as your population increases, of course, you've got to have places for then to get educated, places for them to worship, places for them to play.

And Dormont quickly grew as far as a, a having a first class school system which actually brought in students from outside the borough.

If anybody told me or asked me about living here all my life, I would have thought that that would never happen.

Just like most people, they think they'll grow up and go somewhere that might be more interesting, or bigger, or more exotic.

But, I grew up here.

I went to grade school and high school and the whole bit sometimes these things people can't control, you know, because, there was a woman who was teaching a half day in school, had started about two weeks earlier, and she decided she really didn't want the job.

So I was hired to teach in the afternoons at Hillsdale School, right back where I started K through eight.

After a year, then they needed a full time teacher.

So I went to work full time and it was the start of 39 years of teaching at the school that I had gone to, and the school that I am now back in with the historical society.

So almost all of my years have been spent in that building.

Luckily.

The school was a blast.

It had a really good feel to it.

I just remember, being excited for school.

I remember the first day they had school lunch was a very exciting day for me and I, you know, fourth and fifth grade.

Great memories there.

Great teachers.

From Hillsdale, We went to Jane F, which is no longer there anymore.

So we went to Jane F. Middle School, which was the biggest play there up to that point with the biggest building I've ever been into.

And it was it was really cool.

I liked being there, even though we were sort of there in the last few years of its existence.

We were there literally we were there.

They told us to get out and then they demolished it.

Yes, they did.

And meeting Cathy, was a day that changed my life forever.

Never to be altered again.

Actually, when we first met, I probably had no clue really like, what was going on because it was in sixth grade.

So, you know, that was, just honestly by luck as well, too, because we both have names at the beginning of the alphabet, our last names, you know, at the beginning of the alphabet.

And so we were in the same homeroom and, you know, again, you bring for Keystone Oaks, you bring three communities together.

So in sixth grade, there's this there's all these new people to meet and to find out about.

And, so Mike and I, you know, we're in the same homeroom from sixth grade and kind of grew up together, you know, those formative years.

We definitely kind of grew up together.

And, it honestly wasn't until Sadie Hawkins of our senior year that we, you know, got together, actually, you know, with the dance together and then stayed together.

And so, but it was funny because both of us have roots here in Dormont.

So Mike's dad with, dad's family lived in Dormont, and then both my mom and dad lived in Dormont.

So I came home, and I told my family that I met somebody named Mike Cerminara and they knew the last name, so, you know, that could have, because I think Dormont has those families that stay around all the time.

So I think that that's that happens a lot for, you know, Dormont people because they, they have the family names stick around.

And I think, when we got at our wedding, it almost was like a, almost like a class reunion for our aunts and uncles because they all knew each other as well.

So it was kind of it was kind of neat.

Dormont is for lovers.

And one of the great benefits of Dormont was Dormont Park, a large municipal park.

And looking in comparison to the size of the borough, which is just slightly under one square mile, and this park was it was an enormous asset, was kind of a nice wooded enclave in the middle of this, this new residential area.

We liked having our birthday parties in the park whenever it was open.

We just would do birthday parties in the park, especially since we could walk to it.

Oh, yeah.

When our kids were little, we'd be there every other day, and I think that was something fun where they could run around in and and it was the coolest thing.

No one else had that crazy Castle Park.

Yeah, I think people know it is the Castle Park.

And like, even it's fun to go there in the summer when it's packed, but then it's also fun to go there, you know, in a cold winter day.

Why not?

Be the only person there.

July 4th in most parts of the country is known as Independence Day, but here in Dormont, since I believe it was around 1912 when they had the first, Dormont Day.

It just they held it on the 4th of July, but they called it Dormont Day.

And it was a big community get together.

They had all all sorts of activities and ball games and and it's still going on to this day.

One of the most fun things was going down to the park on the 4th of July, when they had the Dormont Day, and there was always so much to do, and you felt like you could really have a lot of fun with like $3, you know, playing all the games and the raffles.

And I remember coming it was a big, big treat to come to Dormont, to go to Dormonts fireworks to somehow they did spectacular fireworks.

Dormont at one time had the largest swimming pool in all of Pennsylvania.

It started out in the 1920s, basically just as a mud bottom spring, and quickly, because of its popularity, was developed into a full fledged swimming pool and it became the center of activity for many years.

And it's still there.

The swimming pool was a, meeting place for me and my friends when I was kids.

I had cousins that lived here and, that was the highlight of the summer was going down to Dormont pool.

And I have fond memories of going to Dormont pool with my grandmother.

When I was a child.

And it's fun to pass those on, to my children as they grew up and they took swimming lessons at Dormont pool And now seeing my grandchildren playing in the, in the pool.

And I'm the old person.

And I've saved all my medal pool passes.

I still have a tin with all my metal pool passes from the years past, and it was a metal pass, and they had a number on it.

And you sewed it on to your bathing suit.

I think that's funny to hear.

My parents stories, your parents stories about, you know, going to Dormont pool and then our stories and now our kids stories about going to Dormont pool.

All of our grandfathers swam there.

All of our grandfathers, every one of them.

Yes.

There was a high diving board and a low diving board, and the low board was fun.

That you could do yours and we would dare each other to go up to the high board.

Oh, I could do that.

But when you got up there and you looked down, I did, I finally did a dive off the high board, at Dormont pool but I didn't land too well.

I'm heading for the blue horizon, where the mountains meet the sky people in Dormont are a big aspect of this community, and we've had some very interesting people come out of this community.

And, one of the more, well known is a, country singer songwriter, guitar player, By the name of Slim Bryant.

Each of you, I'm sure, has brought your memories, their respect and your admiration for one of Dormonts And indeed, the whole area's upstanding citizens.

We are very proud and very pleased to have Dormont resident Slim Bryant with us this evening.

Slim was a kind of a driving force in in country music back in the 40s and 50s.

He had a very distinctive, guitar style, somewhat somewhat jazz oriented as well as country.

And he had a group called Slim Bryan and his Wildcats.

When 219 starts to ball the Jack the train whistle Boogie really sends me back.

Yes, a train whistle boogie.

They played all over the country.

Played with some big name people like Jimmy Rogers.

But he was headquartered here in Pittsburgh, and he actually had a, early morning TV show.

They did his show live at 5:45 every morning, and no matter where they were the night before, they were in that studio doing that show and Slim and his Wildcats would come on in and, basically play you play, country western music at that hour of the morning.

Well, folks, this is Slim Bryan and the Wildcats.

There are songs that are fond of the prairie.

Well, my dad, being raised on a farm was very fond of country music.

So every Sunday morning we would listen to the Wildcats on the radio and their music.

It was, happy music and lilting music, but it wasn't silly at all.

It was really.

They had the songs, had messages.

Even after the Wildcats broke up, Slim went on to give guitar lessons.

His wife had a, a store on Potomac Avenue, a card store, and Slim gave guitar lessons there, as well as in his home.

And Slim was with us until until very recently.

And when he passed away at the age of 103.

Very unusual character, very intelligent man and a very incredibly good guitar player and songwriter throughout his whole life.

He was also a gentleman.

Everybody in the community knew Slim.

I used to go over and sit and talk with him in his living room, and he would tell me some of the experiences that he had, not music all the time.

But growing up in Georgia and, he was spellbinding.

You could sit and listen to him and talk to him.

Just, it's like you were talking to a family member.

I never knew anybody that really did not admire him.

Not just like him, but like him and admire him.

Another, prominent Dormonter was, James Fulton, who was in the United States Congress.

His first love was Dormont Borough followed by the space program and everything that went with it.

He grew up here in Dormont and, went on to be elected to Congress.

And he was very instrumental in the space program.

Back in the 60s with the space race began after the, the Russians put Sputnik up into space.

The United States jumped into the space race.

And, it was kind of, a risky proposition at that time.

But Fulton was one of the proponents.

He was one of the driving forces behind the, space shuttle, which was later developed as a reusable spacecraft that could be used to explore space.

That was how, you know, the space stations and things that we have now that was made possible by things like the space shuttle.

And Fulton was very instrumental in not only keeping that program going, but in generating interest for it.

Play ball!

Baseball was always a popular pastime here in Dormont.

Dormont had a very good semi-pro team.

They actually started the Dormont Baseball Club way back in 1925.

And then in 1929, they joined the Greater Pittsburgh League, which involved teams from, of course, the city of Pittsburgh and in surrounding communities.

They had such a good team that in the 1940s, like from 1942 to 1946, they won the Greater Pittsburgh League championship four years in a row.

They even played teams outside of that league, including the Negro League teams like the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords.

And from what I understand, those games were sellouts, and they played against such celebrity Negro players as, Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige.

I mean, this was the, the heyday for Negro League ball playing here in Pittsburgh and Dormont they looked at it as a good contender for those, those were some good games.

Dormont Baseball club also played exhibition games against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

And in the 40s, there were times that the Pirates were drawing less people at their home games, and the Dormont team was drawing it at their home games.

The team was around up until the up through the 1950s, and a lot a number of the people that were involved with the team eventually, went on to baseball careers.

And probably of the most prominent, celebrity we have of that sort is Elmer Gray, who was a, member of the team for many years.

And he went on to work as a scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

And he was the, scout that was responsible for signing up Barry Bonds.

I think that the Dormont Library is probably one of the friendliest libraries in the county.

We welcome our patrons.

We get to know them well.

We're very down to earth here.

Our staff is some of the most outgoing, that I've seen anywhere.

And we're always told, you know, we love to come and visit you.

You guys always make us feel so welcome, and you're so accommodating and helpful.

So I think that's our biggest plus.

And we're a small library.

We have a lot of large libraries around us, and yet people will still go out of their way to come and visit us because of the the people that work here.

The library's been here for over 80 years and we're very blessed in a community this size to have a library with such a long standing.

It started in 1936, with, I believe it's the Kelton PFO.

Had started to gather books and then the collection grew and it made a couple of different moves to different parts of Dormont and finally ended up in this building in 1962.

That this was a one story building.

And we have grown ever since.

You know, we've added to the collection and a number of years ago, the roof started to leak, and they added a second floor when they decided to, fix the roof.

So we ended up getting an additional, two spaces, one for meeting rooms, and programing in our meeting room and another for our computer lab.

So that's increased our usage a lot because we do all different programs of our own.

We house programs, from other people that want to rent the meeting room.

And there's constant use of our computer labs.

So we are very lucky also to have an additional person, a computer lab supervisor that, works with them, teaches different programs on iPads and iPhones how to get an email set up or use the internet.

All of those programs are free, and we're able to give that extra service, which some libraries don't have the ability to do.

Yeah, we're big fans of the library.

We've, we've been, getting the kids excited about it.

They've been growing and enjoying it.

And, you know, we we support the library and we like all that they offer.

I think that's great.

Technology has increased.

Our collection has grown a lot.

Our usage has grown a lot.

And we've come a long way in those 80 years and, lots of improvements.

We still have a lot more to make.

But, as long as the community supports us and we can find the funding out there, we're just going to keep growing.

After I moved to Dormont, I became very, curious about the history of the borough.

At that time, I started asking around that some people at the library, and he told me that, Muriel Moreland, who was a lifelong resident of Dormont, was contemplating or was in the process of putting together a historical society.

Well, there were 3 or 4 of us that had gone to school together that got to talking about the borough, and we just decided it was time to have a historical society.

And she had a very intense, love for history and for the borough that she grew up in.

And she decided that, you know, she needed some like minded people to help her put this together.

I think weve come further than we ever would have dreamed, we would come in 20 years.

And when we started accumulating.

Well, when we started having our meetings here in the living room, and then we decide we better move.

So we went to the library board and they gave us a schedule that we could pick a time to meet in their second floor.

That kind of got the kind of got the ball rolling.

We got the word out that, there was such a thing as a Dormont historical society.

And then we figured we'd better get incorporated, and we'd better do some other legal things that needed to be done.

And the first thing I knew, it had taken off.

And it was around this time that the, borough was abandoning the old borough building on West Liberty Avenue and moving into the renovated Hillsdale School.

So we talked the borough into letting us use one of the old classrooms, actually an old kindergarten room, actually the basement floor of the Hillsdale School.

And it was about this time that another prominent Dormont high school graduate stepped forward to give us a hand man by the name of Arthur Ziegler.

Arthur was co-founder of the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation back in 1964, and he has a worldwide reputation in the historic preservation business.

Well, Arthur provided us a lot of moral support, technical assistance and even physical assistance in the form of desks, office supplies and other day to day things that we needed to operate our organization.

And then eventually we started accumulating quite a bit of, paraphernalia, photographs, different files, a lot of artifacts.

People have been very good about sending us all sorts of things, from class rings to their award jackets to the Post-Gazette wagon that I'm so fond of.

You name it, we have it.

And hardly a week goes by that we don't get something.

And, we basically ran out of room, and then we started eyeing the, room across the hall from us.

And eventually we were granted that room as well.

So that's the current museum that we have today.

Now we have over 400 members.

Not locally, of course, but still over 400 members.

And I think that's pretty special.

And, these are people that grew up here in Dormont went to school here in Dormont, and still have an affection, a warm spot in their heart for, for for this community.

And they've supported us all these years.

We just celebrating our 20th anniversary this year and we hope to be around for for many more.

My wife and I have been coming out here to Dormont for parties at my friend's house, and we got to see what the borough was like.

And then in 1975, and we purchased a home here.

Several the neighbors took us under their wing, welcomed us into their homes and to their families, and it was just we we almost felt like we'd moved it to Mayberry.

It was just that I don't want to say old fashioned, but it was that friendly.

It was.

It was that it was.

There was like a certain richness to the neighborhood.

Dormont to me is a close knit community of, just absolutely wonderful people, down to earth people, people that like to help out their neighbors, get to know their neighbors.

I think one of the things, nowadays that makes Dormont really cool and unique is the diversity of the people that live here.

I think you see people from every different race and creed and background and all coming together, living in this cool spot.

And I think it's really interesting.

You get a lot out of it.

You could see other people's point of views, other people's perspectives.

It's a wonderful place to live and people are starting to realize it.

And I love seeing strollers.

I saw a baby on a little back backpack carrier the other day, and young people are starting to really realize what a great place it is to raise a family.

We're getting a whole new generation of people coming into Dormont from from within the city.

We had, there used to be a bookstore on the South Side that they moved to Dormont some years ago.

And the guy that ran the bookstore told me that the South Side was where the hipsters all like to live.

But Dormont is where they come when they want to have children.

So it's back to those like childhood memories of, you know, thinking about what what it was like for my parents to grow up in and, a town like Dormont where you can, you know, walk the streets and visit your neighbor and hang out on your porch, those simple things.

I think were something that we value as even as young professionals.

And then it kind of melted into our family life.

I love the people.

I love the, location.

I love everything that they have here.

To me, it's probably the most convenient location that you could possibly have in the greater Pittsburgh area.

And the convenience, if you're using a car, is spoiled me just.

I do business all over town, and I'm able to be anywhere, you know, under 20 minutes.

You're three miles from downtown Pittsburgh.

You can be there non rush hour in 10 or 15 minutes at most.

So you can go to any big city event without having to travel an hour, hour and a half, even 45 minutes.

I mean it's a it's a quick trip in.

It's a quick trip out.

When I was in college, I would commute from downtown to Dormont, and I would take the trolley to get there every single day.

We loved living in Dormont because it was a walking community where you could, you know, walk up West Liberty Avenue, visit the shops on Potomac Avenue, walk to the parks.

We could all attend movies.

We could go grocery shopping.

We had drugstores, we had restaurants, everything within walking distance, which was one of the reasons that we left the Washington, DC area because everything down there basically required you to to get in your car and go somewhere.

We spent half our life in the car, whereas here in Dormont, we spent the majority of our life being with our neighbors.

I guess if there was anything, any commentary, from me, only because I had inside knowledge of the police department and saw the fire department.

And many times these fellows get taken for granted in the fire department.

They're volunteers.

You tend to think of only the major fires, but what the residents don't see is every time there's a fire alarm that goes off in Dormont, these men get out of bed in the middle of the night, ten degrees, they're out there responding, making sure that there's no fire, that it was just a false alarm.

They're investigating during the worst storms where lightning is going off and thunder and setting off every burglar alarm.

Left and right.

The police are out there in the pouring down rain, going around the houses, making sure that nobody's tried to enter.

The fire department's going to every fire alarm.

They're there, 365 days, 24/7.

And when all the rest of us are sitting home with our families at the holidays, and that they're out there serving us and keeping us safe, and, they're very special people.

Being in Dormont, when I joined, there was only 15 firemen.

They were allowed to have 20.

Just to give you an idea, when we I was a fireman, we'd average about 110, 120 calls a year.

Last year they had 550 calls in Dormont.

And finding firemen or volunteers was very hard.

I got on, I enjoyed every part of it.

It's dangerous.

It's, But, you know, when people call 911 or call the police station years ago, they expect somebody to come to their house.

If it's 3:00, 4:00 in the morning, they expect the body there.

More than one body.

Well, the fire department was my husband's first love.

He was a member of the fire department all his life.

All the years he was mayor.

When the fire whistle blew off, there was a council meeting.

He went to the fire.

I was always, out of the way when that fire whistle blows because you didn't want to be in between Bill and the the car when the fire whistle blew.

He forgot he was a mayor and off he went to the fire.

And then he go back to the borough building and pick up where he left off with the council meetings.

The borough was very important to him.

When the 219 starts to ball the Jack the train whistle Boogie really sends me back.

Yes the train whistle boogie.

Oh the train whistle boogie.

When she goes by the boogies on a double track.

You can hear the boogie if you don't be late.

Cause, she's all steamed up and chain going away.

Just the perfect little blowing.

And she wants to get going.

The book is on the Pullman.

You can find it on the free.

When she blows that whistle after 10:30, I be standing here watching and waving her in.

Just a clicking and clacking.

Just a wrecking and wrecking.

Hey, if you like to boogie.

Here she comes around the bend.

Every night And the morning you can see me here.

Wishing I could trade places with the engineer Id like to blow that whistle.

Make the train whistle boogie.

Oh the train whistle boogie.

Everybody likes to hear.

Im drifting into deep water.

I'm starting to care for you.

You're getting me in deep water.

Be careful what you do.

Speedy delivery.

See you around the neighborhood.