Elegy for the train

By my count, I’ve made 14 long-distance train trips, 8 of which were across the entire country. All in all, I’ve logged about 30,000 miles.

But my most recent ’cross-country trip may have been my last major ride.

Onboard the California Zephyr in May, I was thinking about my history with trains, and I wrote much of this blog post one morning as we passed over the Mississippi.

***

When my aunt Jackie married her second husband in 1968, he was 22, she nearly 38. They’d met in a Los Angeles working-class bar, where he was feeding a jukebox and mooning over a breakup. He was a Missouri country boy, tall, lean, muscular, black-haired, nice-looking in an angular way. He wore a cowboy hat and a white t-shirt and jeans with a big belt buckle. A truck driver by trade, he was strong and capable, but he needed mothering, and my aunt was a large, buxom, Mama Cass type, with blankets of maternal love and wisdom to shelter him.

Native American artifacts and collectible bottles of Wild Turkey lined the walls of my new uncle’s study. I think he may have been part Native American. I don’t know – he was just sort of mythical to my teenage self. Although really good to everyone around him, he did have a habit of bringing home items that “were left behind” or “had fallen off a stranger’s truck” or “were damaged in a warehouse” – things like Martin guitars and expensive stereo equipment. He played his country music loud and full in their small house and it sounded so pristine and gorgeous on his stereo that even I – a diehard rock ‘n’ roller – grew to appreciate it. I fell in love with a singer he listened to all the time named Johnny Duncan and when I mentioned it my uncle just gave me the record on the spot.

In 1972, when I was periodically driving south to visit just after high school, he became absolutely obsessed with Arlo Guthrie’s version of “The City of New Orleans,” playing it loudly and incessantly, all day long. Thankfully, I loved that song as much as he did. It enveloped the house and blasted into my soul, really.

I was just starting to read Kerouac then, naively vowing to become a freight-hopping vagabond. I’d always liked trains in some way, mostly because of folk songs like “John Henry” and “Casey Jones” that I’d learned as a little girl, and also because the Southern Pacific ran two trains near my grandparents’ home in San Leandro that would blow their whistles and rattle the house in the early morning darkness. The adults grumbled about it; I lay awake and listened.

But there was something in “The City of New Orleans” – Ry Cooder’s simple guitar, Arlo’s precarious vocal, the cascading piano, Steve Goodman’s nostalgic lyrics paying homage to lifelong railroad men – that got so deeply embedded in my heart that I never shook it loose.

So when I retired in December 2013, I decided to start riding the rails. I wasn’t jumping boxcars, mind you, or dipping my cup of soup back from a gurglin’ cracklin’ caldron in some train yard. I was riding softly and (somewhat) comfortably in a sleeper car. But I was finally realizing my train dreams.

Now, 14 trips later, I think my railroad days might be ebbing. The trips are growing tougher. Both Amtrak and I are aging. Our bones are brittle and we’re getting tired. The four solitary days and 3,100 miles are beginning to be a slog.

***

Amtrak is a quasi-public entity heavily subsidized by the federal government and, for some of its shorter routes, by state governments. Nevertheless, our railroads get much lesser funding than highways and airports, and the negligence is starting to show. Tracks are rough; bridges and tunnels are old; and the 40-year-old passenger cars are worn and failing. Onboard temperatures vacillate from meat locker to sauna. The sleeper doors rattle so much that I’ve had to stuff socks in the gaps. On my last trip the lights in my room were sporadically out, and the toilet sometimes hard to flush. On many routes now, dining cars have been replaced by “flex meals” – boxed food that on one occasion was so inedible that I actually tossed it into the trash in frustration. On my Empire Builder trip last year, we were all treated to a mysterious but constant sewage smell for three days. The service is getting frayed.

You have to be a little bit hardy to take the train long-distance, which is one of the reasons I’ve loved doing it. I don’t want a curated trip on a luxury train – that’s not my thing. I like a populist journey.

But one’s hardiness diminishes with age, and the leaning, wobbling, and slamming of the passenger cars can be hazardous. At night, the Zephyr barrels across the prairie in an urgent, noisy, shuddering rush. Normally the only result is ragged sleep. But on this trip, a sudden jerk of the train while I was standing in my room threw me backwards into a chair armrest. I was fine, but my spine wore a plate-sized bruise for a few days.

There’s also the cruel fact that the journey now costs FOUR TIMES what it did just 10 years ago. For my latest ride, I drained all of my Amtrak points.

The worst part, though, is the loneliness of a four-day trip. I do chat with my dining mates, but in-between meals the minutes can be agonizingly slow. When I first started taking trains, and every bend in the track was new, the sheer romance of the ride somehow filled my hours. A bit of that remains, for sure, but during my May odyssey I often found myself in a “Wish I were there already” state of mind. That’s a telling sign.

Also, what if I have a medical emergency in the middle of Nebraska?

***

Speaking of dining, my first two dinners on board highlighted my usual inelegance. On the first night I ordered a glass of red wine with my steak and then – after only two sips – knocked it all over the table. Our waitress deftly changed out the tablecloth while my tablemates hoisted their food and dinnerware in the air. Mortified.

The next night I ordered the pasta, which was uncommonly delicious. Cooked al dente and everything. After two bites I promptly spilled the entire plate, sauce and all, onto my lap. Same waitress. Double mortification.

Clumsiness aside, one of my true privileges has been dining with scores of interesting people over the years. I can look back at my train notebook and recall most of them, and almost everyone has been open and friendly. Parents heading to their children’s graduations from small colleges in small towns. A man going to see his sister perform in the Modesto Symphony Orchestra. A woman traveling to surprise her 42-year-old best friend who was graduating from a North Dakota law school. Veterans. International vacationers. Schoolteachers and college professors. An 84-year-old gambler and overall tough broad. A mother presenting the world to her autistic son. Men working mysterious jobs in the Nevada desert (“fuel specialist”; “cyanide engineer”). A woman who earns a living setting up Ace Hardware stores. A soul and doo-wop radio DJ from a small northern California town. Ex-addicts. A young Turkish woman who taught me backgammon strategies. A PGA professional. A couple from Brownsville, Texas who informed me proudly that their town is the grapefruit capital of the country. Nurses. Poets. Amish folks. Honeymooners with nose rings and ear chains.

***

Looking back, Amtrak has been a fun hodgepodge of flubs and foibles.

• I accidentally turned on the shower above me while I was sitting fully clothed on the toilet in my sleeper bathroom.
• I walked blithely into my car attendant’s room while he was lying on his bed in his underwear, reading.
• I got altitude sickness while crossing the Rockies and was convinced I might be dying.
• I opened my gel deodorant at altitude and it spit gobs all over my shirt.
• A woman came into my room uninvited, thinking it was the bathroom!
• I cursed the guy in room D for periodically slamming something so loudly that it scared me to absolute death, only to realize hours later that it was my own (haunted) toilet seat.
• I exited my shower once and was getting dressed in the room when I suddenly realized that we’d stopped at a station and people on the platform were looking right at me.

***

I’m writing this as we cross the Mississippi from Iowa into Illinois. What a magnificent country this is! Earlier my dining mates asked me to name the three most beautiful states. Perhaps biased, I listed California first because of its topographical variety: ocean, mountains, desert, fertile valleys. They all agreed. Beyond that, I couldn’t narrow down the other two states. They’re all glorious. Desert and sagebrush in Nevada, red rock and soil in Utah, snow and yellow aspens in Colorado, corn and farmhouses in Indiana, sycamores and narrow river valleys in Maryland.

If I never do this ’cross-country stint again, I’ll miss the totality of it – the absolute privilege of being able to see just about every facet of the United States glide past my window.

And I’ll miss the utter calm of going to bed in Colorado and waking up peacefully in Nebraska.

Come to think of it, maybe I’m changing my mind.

In truth, I doubt that I’ll cut my ties with trains entirely. Last month I took some lovely short rides in West Virginia and Gettysburg, and the distance doesn’t matter – I still get goosebumps at the high lonesome sound of the departing whistle and the steady, languorous crawl of the train as it pulls out from the station. I hope I have more of those rides in my future.

Someday I’d also like to board the “City of New Orleans,” if only for a few stops. After all, my blog is named after that song.

But probably no more ’cross-country train trips.

Probably.

Still, here’s my favorite fantasy: I board the train in California and my friends living around the country get on at various points and ride along with me until they feel like getting off, when the next person hops on. What a dream that would be!

Four days would not be insurmountable then.

***

As a younger person, my train rides were always filled with hope and adrenaline. Lately they’ve been distinguished by poignancy. The slow passage of time on these trips has allowed me long stretches of thought and memory. Sometimes I think about my regrets, or my losses, and it brings out the melancholy in me. That’s all part of the experience.

On the other hand, the beauty of a train ride is the suspension of urgency and the opportunity to stay patiently grounded in the moment.

One day, on the Zephyr, a young man walked by my room, leading his great-grandmother gently by the hand. She apologized to him for being so slow.

“Well, I get to hold your hand,” he said. “I’ve got nothing to complain about.”

***

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Due to popular demand, I am including, at the end of each blog post, the latest random diary entries that I’ve been posting on Facebook for “Throwback Thursday.” These are all taken absolutely verbatim from the lengthy diaries I kept between 1970 and 1987.

November 15, 1977 [age 21]: 

“Jerry, the Italian manager at PFM [the SF State cafeteria, where I worked], absolutely screamed at me yesterday in front of a long line of people waiting to be served, for giving too much food to the students. ‘It’s not free, you know,’ he bellowed, and I could’ve hit him over the head with a salami.”

December 10, 1977 [age 22]:

“[My sister] Janine and I went to the zoo today. I had a particularly good time because I got excellent film footage of animals doing funny things – usually, now that I think about it, scratching themselves. I filmed a monkey picking fleas off his arm and eating them. HILARIOUS!”

December 21, 1977 [age 22]:

[back with my family on Christmas break from the dorms] “Home at last! Finished up the last of my errands today, giving my dorm room the most half-assed ‘dusting’ and ‘vacuuming’ you’ve ever seen, which basically involved crawling on my hands and knees and picking lint off the rug.”

December 28, 1977 [age 22]:

“Spent the day shopping for a stupid pair of brown shoes for me. I also got my ears pierced because Mom & [my sister] Janine wanted me to do it – I sure didn’t want to. It hurt like hell, but I’m kind of glad I did it. I have to face the fact that I’m a woman now, as Mom told me yesterday. Well, maybe sooner or later, Mom.”

December 31, 1977 [age 22]:

“Well, the year is ending. I keep subtly trying to change my personality, trying to warm it up and be more personable and friendly, but it doesn’t always work because of my inherent shyness and boring self. In public I think I’m not the warm and generous person I believe myself to be. And now I have only a year or two before I have to get a full-time job and give up the irresponsibility and aloneness of university living. I believe I can do it, but only painfully.”

January 2, 1978 [age 22]:

“I had a really nice evening in L.A. today. We ate chili and cornbread at [my aunt] Jackie’s and listened to Gordon Lightfoot in [my uncle] Fred’s den. By the end of the evening, I was feeling dandy. I’d had two huge “glasses” (more like pint jars) of wine and then Fred let me have a little bit of his Wild Turkey (gosh, so smooth) and brother I laughed all night.”

February 1, 1978 [age 22]:

“On Mondays & Wednesdays I have a horrible class called ‘Study of the Nature of Language,’ a subject bad enough in and of itself because it’s so vague. The professor is worse. He doesn’t particularly know his material, he reads his lectures, he’s nearly impossible to understand and so boring I often want to scream, and he continually twiddles his beard.”

February 5, 1978 [age 22]:

“So this weekend I came to Zio and Zia’s [Italian words for ‘aunt’ and ‘uncle’] house and relaxed in their alcohol and their crazy company. Zia was so motherlike – wanted to run my bathwater and turn down my covers when I went to bed! All night long I laughed about Zia’s descriptions of the way American Italians muck up good Italian: ‘They don’t use the right way of talking the language,’ she says – ‘they SLING it.’ I guess that’s the verb form of slang. And apparently she & Zio went to see a professional basketball game, and here was her description: ‘All they do is run back and forth, back and forth – those poor fellows!’ ”