Oil Tanker Train

Merle Haggard was born in 1937 to a mother and father who lived in a converted boxcar in Oildale, California. He recalls here how an oil tanker train, "would rumble and rattle the old boxcar we lived in."

Haggard recalled the inspiration for the track to Uncut magazine: "It used to come by every day and rattle the ground. We were in earthquake country, so when the ground starts moving, you look up. When that old oil train would go by - it done that every morning, it done that every evening - it grabbed your attention. That was doing it with steam engines back then. You got the old 'choo choo' going by and you got the whistle. It added the background to life that don't exist anymore."