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Boxcar wrote about half the songs he recored. He writes about love, steamboats, rivers, trains.
He writes about "whatever happens to come along," he explaines. He recalls his songs Mister Can You Spare A Dime, My heart's Deep In the Heart Of Texas, and Let's Get Back To Loving and Hurting, to name a few.
"I have several gold and platinum albums hanging on the walls in my museum," he says, referring to the large van that also moves the circuit with Boxcar and his band.
All the success he has accquired has come within the last eight years, he says. Eight years ago he had nothing.
That is when he wrote the song, Cold, Lonely City, Chicago.
"I was in Chicago one night," he says. "Even with eight million people up there, I never felt so alone in all my life. I was cold and hungry.
"I had a booking to play in Freeport, Illinois. When I got to Chicago, I had $51 in my pocket. I didn't have any credit cards, then. In order to rent a car, they wanted a $100 deposit. Well, from O'Hare Airport to Freeport, there must be fifteen toll booths. I went throught the first toll booth, fifteen cents, then the next, and so on.
"Well, pretty soon my dollar was gone. I had to get off that dog-gone toll road and get over to another road. It was cold, and snowed over. So I finally got back on the toll road. Went right back through the toll booth...
"Why, if they had caught me coming through all those toll booths, they would have locked me up. I had no money. They might still be looking for whoever rented that car, you know," he said with a laugh.
Growing up in East Texas, Boxcar Willie lived with his family "Right on the Kattie Railroad," he says. "My dad worked for Kanss-Missouri Railroad call the K-Line. The front porch of our house was about six feet from the track. I could almost jump from the porch slab to the track."
When he was a kid, he used to hop the trains all the time. That was our way of life. His parents never reprimanded him from jumping trains, he says. Because "they did it too."