Season 1: Episode 30

A Stop At Willoughby
by Michael Romani

Even in a place as vast as space
We all need to find our happy place
There where even in that cracked pace
A human can find escape from the rat race
Free from self-aggrandizing pretension
A place where dreams are not just a destination

In a high pressure meeting, the cigar chomping chairman
Could not care-a-less about being fair to him
Push! Push! Push!! Business all the way
Twenty-four seven each and every day
Push, push, push business on down the line
Push, push, push all the way; all of the time

Until Williams cannot take it any more
Seeking to escape out one door to behind another door
Gart Williams' armor is starting to crack and kink
One more false move and he is forced to think
A naked target, he remains cannonaded by this life
His insecurity has humiliated him into constant strife

Disquieted ruminations of self worth have torn him apart
Forcing him to move deeper to survive inside his heart
On a rail car ride through a whiteout snowy flurry
Mr. Williams wishes he could slow down and not hurry
It's a dog-eat-dog world filled with ever shorter days
Oh, how he wishes all the pushing would just go away

Everyday it is push, push, push on down the line
Push, push, push, all the way and all of the time
Falling into a nap, Williams dreams of another time
It's a small town, Willoughby, at the end of the line
Sunny, bright, 1888 Willoughby right out the window
Where a man can live full measure at a comfortable slow

A brief glimpse into how things might and should be
If a man were only able to live life more slowly
Instead, he wakes to a fast paced life with no sympathy
Married to a shrewish wife who is absent any empathy
In a world where an intake of breath is mistaken
For compassion and a man must be hard or be forsaken

Henpecked into the cage of a drunkard's corner
Berated and belittled, he wishes he could just ignore
Pinpricked; needled without love and no sympathy
Her attacks go on and on in an endless tireless litany
He turns and sits and explains he's tired of the charade
He no longer wants to be part of the lonely masquerade

It seems that the older and wiser that he gets
He finds the rat race one he would like to forget
He's found he's just an average non-competitive type of guy
Yet, he's compelled to go on unable to stomach her appetite
He has just about had enough of her and of this fight

There is one place he knows that he would rather be
That self-manufactured dream called Willoughby
There in that summery sort of barefoot dream
Bandstand and bicycles from a Currier and Ives scene
A crazy dream of turn of the century serenity
Listening, his wife is repulsed at this banality

At the end, she turns - keeping nothing but nothing in
Spilling out the tragedy of having married Huck Finn
A place and a time where a man could live full measure
A peace of mind is his greatest and simplest pleasure
The conductor says no train stops in a place called Willoughby
But, oh, what a sweet, sweet dream even if a fantasy

It's not easy living when you're not good enough
But, that's the sort of place that lies beyond the bluff
And even a blind man can very easily turn to see
That a place where a man can live and walk slowly
Calls to the dreamers soul with its fetching fantasy
No more push, push, push just living so very peacefully

Another high pressure day pushes and pushes him
And even his warped mirror pushes him toward his whim
Until with a fist he cracks the shattered glass
Knowing life won't ever give him a free pass
He cannot take this not another day; not another hour
As disagreeable as it is, he's lost all will power

Another day's lost and lonely snowbound train ride 
Gart Williams has let go of all remaining pride
Looking outside the train window, he smiles peacefully
Having found his way back to enchanting Willoughby
Sans his brief case, he walks off slowly in full measure
To a more peaceful life; one he knows he will treasure

They found his body where he died they say instantly
Jumping from the platform having been pushed so constantly
Pushed, pushed, pushed on down to the end of that line
Willoughby and Sons Funeral Home the end of his time
Willoughby, a hidden place of peace nestled in his mind
Perhaps the very last stop for a man who could not find

Even just a little satisfaction and peace in his days
A man who just had to find some other sort of a way
A life lived by a man living life way too fast
Pushed around the bend that a broken heart goes past
A place of puckish sunlight that dances slowly
In that full measure of life ended in Willoughby

(c) August 15, 2017  Michael Romani
All Rights Reserved