THE BOY ON THE TRAIN

In the  winter of 1963, I think, we took a family train trip, on a cross country passenger train, from either Sacramento CA, maybe Vallejo, to Kearney Nebraska.

I was about 12. 13 maybe. I think we were on the train a couple of nights, or three. It was cold, snowy, icy Wintertime. As I recall, we got on the train, at night, at he big station and loaded our stuff on and got settled wherever we were supposed to be. Lots of talking, confusion, meeting and greeting…instructing the staff, showing documents and commentary. Indoctrination, instruction, translation—so that we might more readily exist in this microcosm world for a few days, where things were different than we were used to.

Night went on, in the station-yard-and we(kids) expected to just GO! But that is not the way of trains. There was a period of time, in the train yard, where cars were repositioned, slammed and clanked and jolted around a bit, with us in our car. There was activity and motion for a long period of time. You could feel the car bang, move, slam. Mostly not too violently.  I presume now that this was to arrange the right cars, in the right order, behind the right locomotives. I was about 12, so the engineering and logistics were a mystery to me. That glorious time in life, soon to be over, where you trusted the adults to have all in hand, to know what they were doing—-all the why and the where and the how—and you, as a 12/13 year old, didn’t even think about those things. You just ran up and down and around and in and out, exploring everything, only exercising enough pseudo-caution so as to have the adults leave you alone to do what you wanted.

I think it was late nighttime when we got underway, heading East, and almost immediately into the first mountain ranges. We chugged out and up over these mountains, which were breathtaking, even to a pre-teen know it all. I was a Boy Scout camper and had some wilderness experience, so I could possibly appreciate it more than average. I don’t know.  There was nothing but snow covered peaks and valleys and forests of huge evergreens poking up. I guess that somehow it was now daylight, as I remember it well. I had not been on a real train before, although my mom and dad came from an age when it was the preferred long distance transport, before ubiquitous air travel. But a lifetime of Air Force military and foreign assignments meant they to them too, it was a rarity, a treat, and unusual experience to be doing it again. 

On the “up” side of he mountains, climbing… we would go slowly, as trains do. Out the windows, we could have touched the snowbanks. Perhaps not. There was at least one observation car, and by that I mean a “dome” car, where you could sit up high, and gaze up at the sky. In the mountains over Nevada and I suppose Wyoming or Utah, or Colorado, who knew??—-in those mountain ranges, there was no ambient light, and thus the stars were, in fact, like a milky covering across the black night sky. The actual “Milky Way”, I supposed. The mountain peaks and short and far distance were dark shapes and shadows. Beyond the warm safety of the train, there was bitter cold, seemingly lifeless mountain forest and Winter desolation. Oh I know that not to be true now, but that is what I thought in the dome car. At age 12, it was frightening and exhilarating and full of the unknown and unknowable.

There was a “snack” car, a favorite for 12 year olds, sodas and chips and bugging your parents for the quarters to feed it—-there were actual soda clerks and attendants, in white jackets. Almost every attendant, porter, worker or staff member was black. There was a dining car, with eggs in little cups and toast, and white tablecloths and real flowers on the table, in little vases—-which my mother would smell and smile. We ate here a few times.

 There was a darker and deep smelling “lounge car” where men, and some women, gathered in clouds of tobacco smoke and liquor fumes and talked quietly. It seemed the lighting in this car was dim and sort of orange, so everyone looked either pretty or handsome, which I now suspect they were not.

Dawn would come a little faster than normal, as were moving eastward. I would go up and down the train, in and out of the cars, looking at people in heir seats, reading and talking and smoking, and then on to the next car. I would opt for the dome car, when I could, to look at stuff. I think we stopped a couple times and the configuration of the train would change and the cars would be in different order, in different places. I am not sure. In the dome car, the gold and pink and orange of the bright clear dawn sky started up and over the peaks. Why had we stopped? I was scared, …no, I was concerned and alert…but I knew the adults and authority figures knew what they were about. It was warm on the train.

I do not recall if we had a sleeping berth. I think maybe we did, but I have some memory of sleeping in a reclined seat, with a blanket on me.

 A red blanket…deep bright red, with a black stripe across the top of it, and it felt like wool, which it likely was. These blankets are now in “storage” somewhere, I suppose. Whatever happens to the things your parents had in life, that no one really wants, but that cannot be discarded? I don’t know. To this day, I have, and use, the quilts my grandmother and aunts made out of scraps, on cold Nebraska Winter afternoons, and they are very much in play. Doubtless, this will be their last generation in service.

There were lots of mountains. Later, I would learn there are several mountain ranges separating California in the S F Bay Area from Kearney Nebraska, our penultimate goal. There were also PLAINS…flat, broad expanses of range…in the dry brown winter, when there was no snow. I honestly do not have some particular recollection, on this trip,  of these plains and tundras, because in my lifetime, I have traversed them so many times, the memories have all merged.

It started to blizzard hard and snow and ice snow in Western Nebraska, across the open empty land, and it was a horrific, thick blizzard. I think we may have been stuck awhile. Then we pulled into Kearney, after a long time. I could tell my father was a little alarmed air taken aback by the ice storm and snow and blizzard, and even at that age, I juxtaposed his concern against he fact he had grown up here, so if he thought it was bad, it was bad. It was daylight, early afternoon I suspect and we chugged toward north central Nebraska.

By the time we arrived, the sky was blue, the storm over, the air brittle-cold. There was ice—thick thick ICE, on every branch and on poles, the ice was like precious gems, diamonds or something- it was absolutely stunningly beautiful, hanging from everything, the light twinkling through it, producing colors like huge diamonds…and against he feet-deep snow drifts of pure white. it was, as i would come to understand, like walking through a Currier and Ives print, on the way to a Currier and Ives Thanksgiving (maybe Christmas)—off to grandma’s house, just like the songs and movies. I lived the songs. I was the last generation to do this as a right of passage, and didn’t know it nor understand it. Did my mother and father see the changes coming? Probably, a bit. But they wouldn’t have been able to fully imagine.

We piled into Uncle Floyd’s car, a huge Chevrolet 4 door sedan—-all Nebraska farmers had huge, Chevrolet, 4 door sedans—-loaded it up, got into the warm interior, and headed South and West out of Kearney (what were “car chains, or tire chains, I wondered) for….yes. Grandma’s House. In the snow. With horses and barns and corn cob fires and outhouses. Yes we did.