WHY is everything last minute when getting ready to leave? Oh yeah, guess I COULD have saved myself MANY hours if I HAD NOT started this humongous Playlist thing with all these train songs. (g) Ain’t finished yet.

Took a while to search the iTunes Store online for train-related songs. Stopped listing them at 200. Merely added a few more from the 200-to-600 list. NOT that I selected 200 from the list. Just that I listed the first 200 I found at the iTunes Store, then skimmed through the next 400. The purpose was to highlight the ones I want. One star for “Would be nice.” ** **** **Two stars for “Want this.” Three stars for “Need this.” And four stars for “Must have.”

Currently there are 40 with one star (Would be nice) and that was after some heart wrenching pruning.

No Railroad Bill , by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.

No Wreck of the Old ‘97, by Johnny Cash.

No Hobo Bill’s Last Ride, by Hank Snow.

Tell me it ain’t so.

Sadly, it is. And you should see some of the more familiar names on the one-star list. I don’t want to mention any others, as none of these will make it for obvious financial reasons. (sigh)

There are 23 with two stars ** ** (Want this) and these were supposed to automatically make it. (To make it, they, like all the songs on this particular list, have to be downloaded from the iTunes Store, usually for .99 cents each. So you can  see why it may only be a few, if any, of these two-star songs that do make it.)

There are about 15 with three stars (Need this) and four with four stars (Must have). In fact one of the four-star songs is Gordon Lightfoot’s Canadian Railroad Trilogy, which I already have on CD and have imported it to my iTunes Library. So, as Vic Rauter would say, make that only three four-star songs: Chatanooga Choo Choo by Glenn Miller and his Orchestra; On The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe, by Johnny Mercer and Mule Train, by Frankie Lane.

Can anyone argue with these three songs?

I also just realized I already have on CD Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash. (I also have his Blue Train, which I don’t recall seeing on the iTunes Store list. So I’m adding it for free.) So that means only 14 three-star songs and three four-star songs (See how confusing it can get?) so maybe a two-star song like Midnight Special by CCR or It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry, by Bob Dylan or Trans Europe Express by my favourite German band, Kraftwerk, might make it after all. Maybe even all three.

I still have a little bit of credit left on the $50 iTunes credit card Travis gave me almost two years ago. (Took me a while to get up the nerve to use it, though it proved sooo easy.) And I had Mariette pick up a new one ($25) today while she was out shopping.

(I’ve learned that buying these special cards, which are only good at the iTunes Store site, pays off by letting me download a song or two I like instead of buying a whole album, either online, or as a CD. It’s how I got to choose which of Arlo Guthrie’s versions of City of New Orleans I wanted to download/buy a week or so ago.)

So the shopping list has been compiled and I’ll have to see what ends up being bought/downloaded when the crunch comes. It’s late and I still have to try to buy/download as many as I can without using up all my credit at the iTunes Store.

I’ve also gathered together on one machine the train-related songs I already had in my iTunes libraries, plus the songs I had on CD — yeah Locomotive Breath by Jethro Tull, the aforementioned Canadian Railroad Trilogy and even Rod Stewart’s rendition of Downtown Train. As happened with the latter song, and others, the iTunes Store search turned up several versions of some songs. I have to confess Tom Waits rendition of Downtown Train was very tempting. But then you see the limitations I was facing.

At the same time, I wasn’t the least bit tempted to buy the Pocket Songs Karaoke version of Train In Vain, even though I can’t find my Annie Lennox or Clash CDs, which are packed away some place. I KNOW my London Calling CD is lying around somewhere, but I’m far too tired to go look.

The search at the iTunes Store site for train songs didn’t even turn up Train In Vain by the Clash, or Lennox or even Dwight Yoakum’s version, for that matter. These three, plus Toxic Sloth, and a number of other names, cropped up when I just did a search by song title.

Oh well, it’s far too late, and there’s too far to go this night, for me to worry now about all that.

In fact I’d better get busy buying/downloading from the iTunes store so I can put all my selected train-related songs on my iPod with one special playlist.

I WILL publish complete lists when I get back from my train trip. And again, thanks to my dear friends who took the time to post such worthy suggestions.

Last Sunday we visited the Ottawa Farmers Market (www.ottawafarmersmarket.ca) for the first time. A fairly recent addition to Ottawa, the market operates out of Lansdowne Park.

Lansdowne is noted for its dilapidated, idle, former CFL football stadium and the Civic Centre arena, itself home to the Ottawa ’67s of the Ontario Junior A hockey league, rock concerts and the occasional small trade show.

We’d been told that this farmers’ market was tiny, cramped and tucked away in an awkward corner of the mostly paved, municipal “park.” Fortunately none of that proved true. And we had a lovely, and productive, shopping expedition. In fact we were so busy shopping, I forgot to take pictures.

But more about our visit to the market at another time. (Rated: Hopefully, knowing Mr. Procrastination’s modus operendi (sp?) Make that: Knowing Mr. Procrastination’s MO.)

What I want to discuss here is the pleasant memories stirred up by one purchase in particular. There we were walking along row after row of stalls crammed with such fresh, home-grown goodness, when I spotted a handful of bright red, not-so-healthy items that called out to me, like scarlet sirens. As you have no doubt guessed by the accompanying photo, the object of my sudden desire was the good old candy apple.

(The photo was taken later at home, when I had just taken a bite of the candy apple and suddenly realized I had no photo with which to illustrate this article. Thus the bite mark.)

It wasn’t lost on me that most of the candy apples of my youth had been bought in this very location, at the annual Central Canada Exhibition, or as it’s been known for longer than I’ve been around, the Ex. They’ve been trying to move the Ex out of Lansdowne Park for years now and if the current commercial/residential/entertainment/sports redevelopment goes through — bringing back professional football and introducing professional soccer to a rebuilt/refurbished stadium — the Ex will finally HAVE to move.

But back to this rosy red treat.

Throughout my youth, the candy apple was associated with circuses, the Ex and it’s rural counterpart, fall fairs. It later cropped up in some stores, but I refused to buy there. Without the right atmosphere, they just weren’t the same. They lost a specialness when too readily available. Besides, the apples inside store-bought candy apples were often terrible. Unfortunately, even at the proper sources mentioned above, the apples were sometimes merely something to dip into the candy mixture and little, if any, care was taken in obtaining good apples.

After all, it was a kid’s treat and all the kid was really interested in was the candy.

Wrong!

In my day, good apples were highly valued by us kids. Long before some sadistic fools used razor blades to spoil the practice of giving apples — along with candy — at Halloween, apples were legitimate booty, and actually welcomed by trick-or-treating kids.

I also remember Apple Day when Cubs and Scouts went door-to-door selling apples to raise funds. As an eager participant, I found it a fun event. And if one got hungry walking the streets and ringing doorbells, well there were refreshing snacks — fresh, great-tasting apples — readily at hand.

Our family not only bought apples at the Byward Market by the bushel basket, but spotting isolated apple trees along the back roads was a seasonal part of family Sunday drives.

Needless to say these memories made THIS candy apple especially delicious. It didn’t hurt that the point of purchase was also selling fresh fruit, including apples. So this one was VERY good. Almost as good as the candy coating. Actually better than some candy coatings I remember. But this candy coating was of matching excellence.

Though I waited at least a day before eating this candy apple, I didn’t put it in the fridge. Cold can make the candy coating hard and brittle, to the point that biting into the coating can be akin to chewing glass.

By the time I got to savouring this treat, the coating was a little soft, and super sticky trying to get it out of its clear plastic wrap. What I didn’t realize until happening to look down while eating was that some portion of the coating was actually melting — enough for a couple of very sticky spots on my clean and fortunately dark-coloured T-shirt.

But that wasn’t to say the coating was mushy. Far from it. In fact it had just the right crisp crackle that I so like. What also helped was that the coating was super thin. (Too thick and it’s like biting into hard candy.)

Neither was the apple the least bit mushy. Nor too hard. And as thin as the coating was, it was as rich in its kind of flavour, as was the apple.

In fact the combination of the sweet, crackling candy and the denser, softer apple was just about perfect. And that’s not nostalgia talking. I may have purchased this apple for old times sake but this particular candy apple more than lived up to my memories of a really good candy apple.

Oh that distinctive crunch. Oh the wonderful combination of textures and flavours.

And having not put it in the fridge, the thick rim around the top — the bottom when the coating is hardening — was not the teeth grinding, hard-as-nails, throw it away, block of candy of lesser candy apples of my youth.

No this one was a pure delight — to the spirit for the memories it revived and to the palate for the quality someone put into this special treat.

What’s that I hear? The sound of drooling?

“Listen, I’ll stay here. The rest of you, follow me.”

Well, it’s Wednesday and Mr. Procrastination has but a few days to work on his latest plan. The idea is to put together a collection of train-related songs to listen to on his iPod next week while traveling by train to Gaspé, and back.

So Mr. P — no relation to Mr. B (as in Bean) — could use some help before he launches his train-oriented shopping spree on iTunes. What he’s looking for are suggestions. Lots of suggestions.

Mr. P knows that just about everyone has at least one favourite train song, or two, or many. So hit the old Comments button and let fly with suggested song titles — everything from City of New Orleans to the good ol’ Wabash Cannonball.

And when he’s finished, hopefully before the train literally leaves the station, Mr. P will come back and post a new note here listing all the song titles he received and a complete list of those that made his Train Sound-Tracks playlist. (Even at .99 cents per song, he may run out of money at iTunes.)

Anyone interested in the above may like to check out the chain of Comments attached to the movie review of Julie & Julia. That’s where I am enjoying a dialogue with a valued reader about how to subscribe to this blog and receive automatic notification of when this blog is updated.

We’ve found a few partial solutions along the way — I am aiming for auto-notification via e-mail (Mozilla Thunderbird), having achieved this, ticker style, in my Web browser (Mozilla Firefox).

So if you have similar interests, and perhaps even some answers for us, please do check out the Comments thread attached to:

Feast or Famine: Julia’s glorious fun outweighs Julie’s lack of charm

Thanks.