Old Smoke and the Blue Forest Line

Old Smoke left the station loaded up with heavy freight.
This time that old freight train was just half an hour late.
The Engineer who drove him couldn’t help but hesitate…
No one rushed to go into Blue Forest.

It was said Blue Forest had more robberies than trees.
A sign that marked the boundary read, “We’ll Take What We Please.”
The Engineer on Old Smoke was shaking in his knees
as the freight train disappeared into Blue Forest.

Old Smoke chugged into the dark and fearsome forest shade.
In no time at all, off with its freight the robbers made.
The Engineer swore, “Old Smoke, it’s time for an upgrade!
No, we won’t be robbed again in this Blue Forest!”

The Engineer hooked a steel car behind Old Smoke’s caboose
and filled it with cannonballs for the sound that would produce
when he removed the wheels for the steel car to be loose…
a rattlesnake tail clanging through Blue Forest.

Old Smoke’s Engineer screamed, “This rattle’s how it warns!”
But robbers swarmed out of the trees answering with horns.
The Engineer swore, “Old Smoke, next time I’ll give you thorns!
Let’s see who’ll touch you then in this Blue Forest!”

“Old Smoke!” the Engineer laughed. “You parade of porcupines!”
He’d welded to each car a thousand sharpened metal spines.
Someone whispered, “That man should be selling his designs,”
as again the Engineer drove toward Blue Forest.

The robbers rushed the train this time with metal pruning shears
and cut off each and every one of Old Smoke’s sharpened spears.
A robber winked. The Engineer blinked back his angry tears,
and called, “I’ll be back again to this Blue Forest!”

The Engineer ran wire through every car and wheel,
charging up Old Smoke with high volts like an electric eel.
The Engineer laughed, “I can’t wait to hear the robbers squeal!
Oh, I can’t wait to get back to Blue Forest!”

The next day the Engineer got Old Smoke out on time.
He laughed, “Electric shocks are today’s reward for crime!”
But the robbers all wore rubber suits so Old Smoke they could climb…
and they took the freight away into Blue Forest.

When the Engineer drove Old Smoke back into the station
a Company man was waiting there with this revelation…
“We would lose less money, in our approximation,
if we built a bridge to cross above Blue Forest.”

The Engineer went to bed, but he left on the lights.
What kept him wide-awake was a tremendous fear of heights.
He thought, “I should make Old Smoke into a train that bites
so they won’t need no bridge over Blue Forest!”

By morning bridge materials already had appeared,
and to make things even worse than the Engineer had feared
he heard the crunch of boots as a thousand workers neared,
and saws were cutting lumber from Blue Forest.

The Company man insisted, “While we build this bridge
the Company won’t tolerate delivery stoppage!”
Onto the freight the Engineer loaded rotten cabbage,
and gasped, “Old Skunk! Let’s get back to Blue Forest.”

Old Smoke’s smell did not deter the robbers in the least.
It seemed their hunger to steal from Old Smoke only increased.
They took the freight while they enjoyed a rotten cabbage feast
then vanished once again into Blue Forest.

The Engineer returned to a bridge nearly complete.
He could not help but be impressed by this construction feat.
The Company man gloated, “Now the robbers have been beat!
That’s a hundred miles of bridge across Blue Forest!”

The Engineer drove Blue Forest Line with two closed eyes,
muttering, “Old Smoke, why can’t you be a train that flies?”
A tollbooth high above the trees came as no surprise…
and collecting tolls, the robbers of Blue Forest.