The Freedom Train

I’ve never been a fan of TV news shows. As a kid, the evening news was on every night and went largely ignored by me. As an adult, now that we have such wonderful things as CNN and Fox News, televised news has elevated into a migraine-inducing torture scene! It’s on all the time at work, at varying levels of volume depending on which security guard was on duty that morning. The term ‘talking heads’ no longer applies. It’s “screaming hate masks” now.

The big joke about me and the news with my parents is that I’m completely oblivious. I’ve turned a blind eye to the world around me and I’m only involved with my own little bubble. That was very true of Chuck-in-his-twenties. But now that you can choose a variety of ways to get your news, I keep well informed. Unaffiliated news websites, if there is such a thing, is my preferred method. Google News being my first stop. My iPhone chirps all the important news at me. That’s how I found out about Steve Jobs passing away.

For years my only source of news was late night comedians. The Tonight Show or Letterman’s show. I loved Conan O’Brian for quite awhile. The Daily Show is great the few times I caught it. But Lorie’s not really a fan of those shows so I rarely see them anymore.

I AM learning that getting your news from comedians on their talk shows is nothing new. And, in fact, is an excellent example of elements of our entertainment reflecting our culture. Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update is always good. I’m watching 1976 re-runs of SNL with Netflix Streaming and the Weekend Update portion is traditionally the strongest part of the show. Watching a comedic take on news of the day from 1976 has been teaching me things about history and politics and culture of the era that I didn’t learn from comics or remember from my childhood.

As I’ve mentioned before, my favorite old time radio show is Jack Benny. I listen to him while on the treadmill at the gym. I’m up to 1948, at the moment. And I’m constantly getting little news and cultural tidbits from the show that was pertinent to the time they lived in. I was listening to the New Year’s Eve broadcast from December 28th, 1947. The standard New Year’s Eve bit was that Jack played the outgoing year schooling the incoming year on what he had to worry about. One of the things Jack talked to young 1948 about was the Freedom Train.

The Freedom Train was a train attraction in the forties that carried elements of our nation’s history across country to different cities in all forty-eight states. Its first stop was on September 17, 1947 and its last was on October 26th, 1948. The train carried things like the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, one of the original copies of the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, the Iwo Jima Flag, and other such historically significant items. The train had a Marine escort to see to the security of its cargo.

You can read more about the Freedom Train here, or here.

One of the things that caught my attention about this was that it wasn’t the first time I was hearing about it. But my first introduction of the Freedom Train didn’t come from a dusty history book or a Wikipedia article or a Today in History entry from my iPad. It came from reading All-Star Comics #41, cover dated June-July 1948. In that comic, the Justice Society of America had to recover the Freedom Train, which the comic refers to as the “Liberty Train”. Apparently the train had been ingeniously stolen by the Injustice Gang of the World. Those tricky bastards.


The comic takes the time to explain to readers what the train is all about.


I find the concept of the Freedom Train extremely interesting. I can’t imagine anything like it today. First, with our technology in both travel and the internet, we don’t face the same obstacles that were present in 1948 if we decided we wanted to see such things. Second, the government decided to do this! Doesn’t that boggle your mind? One of the reasons I read was that it was to help remind Americans what they just got done fighting for, in the aftermath of a devastating war. If that’s true or not, I don’t know. But I love that reason.

I imagine that word of the Freedom Train was all over the news venues of the time. But I didn’t learn about it from that, not actually having been around in 1948. And I didn’t learn about it while studying history in 2012. I learned about it from comics and comedians, the entertainment of the time.

Some people find this aspect of reading, watching, and listening to past entertainment annoying. They feel like they’re missing out on an in-joke. Lorie doesn’t like those old Saturday Night Live’s. But I’ve grown to love that part of older entertainment; seeing that ‘reflection of culture’.

Thanks,
DCD