Fair crowds are the best crowds, Boxcar said
Story published in the Daily Journal, Kankakee, IL Aug. 20, 1986
The music sounds like a train rolling in. The whistle sounds its warning -- but it's not a whistlem it's Boxcar Willie. The cheering intensifies. Boxcar imitates several kinds of train whistles, then starts picking his guitar, stomping his foot and singing his special variety of country music.
He pauses from his song to make jokes, bringing loud bursts of laughter from the audience.
Boxcar, Saturday night's featured entertainment at the Will County Fair at Peotone, is just as entertaining off stage. He laughs and chats with his audience around his motor home, which carries him from town to town, from fair to fair.
He likes people to get excited. "What entertainer wouldn't want his audience to catch his heart, or to get caught up in the spirit of things," he says. "Some nights are just absolutely over the moon."
Willie grew up sharecropping with his father. But he entertained early, performing a radio show when he was 10. But, he discounts that start, denying any wonder child status. "I don't think that it had anything to do with talent," he says. The guy that ran the show owned the music store and he just thought, 'well this here is a kid I can probably sell a guitar to'."
Now Willie plays on different television shows on the Nashville Channel and is a 'big star' on the -Ole-Opery."