RAILWAY workers called it the Dutchman’s Curve, because it was a blind turn, tricky, risky, dangerous. So called because it was said that only Dutch immigrants dared to do something like that, but it wasn’t necessarily meant as a compliment. It was 10 miles of single track, just outside of Nashville. Outbound traffic had to wait on double track until the incoming train had passed. Line 4 forgot to do that, on a Tuesday morning in July 1918.
Line 1 from Memphis was engineered by William Floyd. Fifteen more minutes, and he would retire; a welcome-home committee was already waiting for him at Nashville’s Union Station. He didn’t make it. In the Dutchman’s Curve, the two trains collided head-on. 101 dead, 171 injured. Each train had both wooden and steel coaches; steel shatters wood. The bodies were so mutilated that Nashville’s butchers were called in to collect the pieces. Regular first responders couldn’t handle the sight of it.
TODAY, the Dutchman’s Curve Train Wreck is still the deadliest train collision in American history. And the reason why the vast majority of people don’t know about it is that it happened in the last summer of the Great War, WW-I, when hundreds of Americans were reported dead every week. The Nashville train disaster had disappeared from the front pages by that Friday.
But three men later decided to keep the memory alive after all, all three country songwriters, all three living in Nashville: Rafe Van Hoy, Townes Van Zandt and David Olney. Van Hoy, his name originally spelled Van Wouw, rooted in the Dutch island of Texel, wrote The Great Nashville Railroad Disaster, going full banjo, but only a temporary hit. Van Zandt, from the Van Zandts of Bakel near Helmond, acted more as an inspiration for Olney. Both of them wrote songs for the stars, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan. But Olney didn’t need much inspiration here.
THE WORD Dutchman was enough to get David started. He had an affinity with those Dutchmen. You could find David Olney in Holland all the time. He gave concerts there, Live in Holland, Holiday in Holland, performed where Aalsmeer’s tulips grow. And he made the CD Dutchman’s Curve. With Train Wreck in it, but also Mr. Vermeer (“A tear-shaped pearl whispers in her ear”).
Four years ago, Olney gave a concert. He interrupted it for a brief interview on a country radio station, and sang there that “all this pride is killing me; this pride is going to take me to my grave.” He then returned to the stage, started a new song, fell silent, said to the audience, “I’m sorry,” closed his eyes, and died on the spot.
With his boots on. Just like engineer William Floyd in the Dutchman’s Curve.
