Travel Song of the Day: ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’ by Gladys Knight and the Pips

When I was in the second grade, my family took a road trip from North Carolina down to Orlando, FL to visit Disney World. I am apart of a family of 6, so we packed in the mini van, with the embarassing “turtle” suitcase type thing on the roof of the van and listened to my dads cassette tapes of Elvis and Beach Boys over and over for 12 long hours. The first day we were there, my parents, brother and younger sister went to go buy tickets to the parks while my older sister and I waited in the car. We watched the monorails..which I had never seen before at the tender age of 10, so I asked my older sister that I thought was so smart and honest, “so where do those things go?” She told me they all went to different states. I asked her where the purple went to and she replied, “Oh the purple one goes to Georgia”. I let it…we got our park passes and the next day go to visit one of the parks. After we parked the car we went to stand in line to catch a ride on one of the monorails and lo and behold…the purple one pulls up! I was too excited to get to the Magic Kingdom so of course I burst into tears and start saying “I dont want to go to Georgia…I dont want to go to Georgia!!!” Everyone stared at me like I was crazy, my parents had to no clue what I was having a melt down over and shoved me on the monorail. My sister started singing “Shes leaving…leaving..on that midnight train to Georgia”. She eventually came clean and told my parents the lie she had told me the day before. She thought it was funny, I didnt. Now everytime I hear that song or she does for that fact, the memories haunt me to being shoved onto a monorail while I freaked out and thought my dreams of the Magic Kingdom were being exchanged for Georgia!