My interpretation of this song centers on anger, grief, remorse, and suicide. He "had some words to holler" meant he was arguing with the woman he loves, "rosie," and she left by "taking a ride." The Greyhound bus "rollin' through the night" had an accident at the "crossroads" intersection which she drove through and hit the "hound." The accident claimed the lives of thirty people, "Rosie" and twenty-nine people on the bus. All the coffins and his love's coffin symbolize the permanence of their nonexistence and he feels responsible for it. He "cries out her name" at night is most likely a reference to her haunting his dreams or him remembering better ties with her when she was alive. He decides to take his own life by standing on the “railroad” tracks and wait on the “graveyard train” to take him out of his misery. Since he can’t live with the grief of losing his love, coupled with the fact he thinks his argument with her which made her leave also caused the subsequent deaths of twenty-nine others as well, he wants the train to kill him before it gets to the station and be death number thirty-two.