Guess the sound of the outward bound
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| Just off the train in Savannah. Dad taking the picture with his new 35mm camera. |
In 1950 our kitchen screen door looked across a half block dirt field and narrow street to the main line of the Great Northern Railroad. Justin and I formed our precious earliest memories to the tune of F7 locomotives growling through the siding. He and I may have spent our adult lives close to home and hearth, but our hearts always longed be out there somewhere riding the rails.
When we were little, mom entertained us with passenger train stories. How when she was a girl folks made their living at tiny town train stops coming through the cars with sandwiches and fried chicken lunches for sale.* And the time uncle John brought her up into the locomotive cab as they rattled through Georgia at a hundred miles an hour. During the war she traveled west to go to school in trains overcrowded with troupes. In forty four mom and dad married in a tiny Idaho town and rode the train east on honeymoon. One engine they recalled had driver wheels taller than their heads.
During the time we lived next to the tracks in Ephrata mom and dad rode the train up to Spokane for a church convention, Justin and I stayed over night out at Thorton's place. Porcupine got under the house. Dog came backing out fast with a muzzle full of quills.
Next day when they got off the train their clothing reeked with hints of tobacco and perfume that evoked vague longings in our hearts. The train represented that wide world beyond our desolate little corner by the tracks. Feeling the power from the locomotives, seeing the warm light from the windows of an evening passenger train slowing through the town pulled at our hearts.
When grandmother and grand-dad came out for a visit by train Justin and I got to climb up into the coach when we saw them off at the end of the visit. Thinking our big chance had come to ride a train, we agreed ahead of time to hide in the train and go along for the ride.
During the summer of 1953 dad landed a little better job down in Ellensburg. In those days the Milwaukee Road ran a passenger train called The Olympian Hiawatha between Chicago and Seattle that made a regular stop in town. A family outing sometimes consisted of waiting around the station to watch the train pull to a stop, watching passengers board before the dark uniformed conductor signaled ahead and she started on her way again.
One day dad hatched up an idea to let Justin and I ride on on that train by our selves over the mountains to Seattle. He and mother would drove over in the car, pick us up at the station then spend a day or two at Norm and Simon's place up in the U district.
Day of the trip, small group of people hanging out on the platform waiting for the train. Kid with a white plaster walking cast tried to balance on a rail, I thought he had better get back from the tracks before the train rolled in or he would have worse than the broken leg.
Excited anticipation turned to stark terror as the huge wheels on the locomotive screeched by ten feet from where we were standing. When the thing came to a stop and the stairs to the day coach swung down, little steel step stool for the first step, I freaked. Screaming that the choo-choo's will go off the rails, I refused to go aboard. Justin went on alone, and had a grand time.
Finally got my chance to ride a year or so later.
The job in Ellensburg must not have worked out all that well for dad, by the following summer he had a little congregation out on east Alder street in Walla Walla. I started first grade, Justin third at Burney school walking distance around the corner. Annah getting ready to make the scene the following July.
At Christmas time that year dad booked four seats in coach on the City of Portland to Chicago, then Dixie Flyer on into Atlanta. Across the state to Savannah in the Central of Georgia
Dad told me and Justin about the trip, using a large format road atlas on which he had drawn a diagonal line straight across from Walla Walla to Savannah GA. Grandparents came out on the train to visit us in Ephrata, so I knew them and had seen pictures of their house. Justin probably remembered Savannah.
Remember the day we went to the station to get the tickets. While he stood at the barred ticket agent's window, a freight locomotive could be heard lumbering past on the tracks outside. Not quite tall enough to see out the window, I tried to climb up onto the rim of a spittoon. Foot slipped in, got wet nearly up to the knee. Blissfully unaware, I wondered why mom acted so grossed out by the whole thing.
Train stops in Pendleton, forty or so miles drive south from Walla Walla, at six in the evening. Christmas party at the church the same day we left town. Car packed and ready, dad probably nervously fingering his watch all afternoon.
No annex or basement rec hall in that little church building. Pews pushed to the side, tables set for potluck, games and songs gathered around the open area to the front. Huge Christmas tree to one side, everyone piled their coats along the wall behind.
As soon as the bags of cookies were passed around and dad said a benediction I scrambled behind the Christmas tree to get my coat. We were already late. Suddenly, almost like the slow motion some say happens in a car wreck, a semi-transparent red glass ball with glitter seemed to appear in front of my eyes, slowly approach before smashing on my forehead. In an instant the entire tree had tumbled to the floor in a giant clatter of mess.
Wonder how the folks felt, their kid creating a huge mess at the moment of departure, having to catch the train, unable to stay and help cleanup. I publicly embarrassed dad another time in that church as well. Wonder if my crazy behavior is the reason he had to suddenly pull up stakes and move up to Montana eighteen months later.
We had four seats in coach class. Unlike modern air plane seating, coach seats in a railway car were wide and comfortable with plenty of space between so one could recline without inconveniencing the passenger behind.
Thrill of climbing the high stairs up into the vestibule in the car, through the narrow passage by the washroom and porters pantry, into the warm light of the coach still lingers in my heart. Remember bending over and rapping the floor with my knuckles, to "see if it is still solid."
Not long after we settled in the porter brought around clean pillows and fresh wool blankets for the night. After the lights in the coach went way down and most folks had dozed off, Justin and I could hear the deep voices of our porter and his college from the next car ahead quietly chatting in their pantry just around the corner. Talk about drinking parties sticks in my mind.
One of guy touted the virtues of canned milk for hang over. Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk, according to him would cure the hang over like nothing else. Maybe it will, I never tried it, but in the early seventies when Justin and I worked my little salmon troller together, he kept his bunk lined with canned condensed milk. Every morning, before swinging his legs over the side of the bunk, he punched the lid on one of the cans of Eagle brand and sucked it dry. Swore that it cured sea sickness like no other remedy.
Booked as round trip, that vacation didn't end as planned. Justin and I cried and begged, to no avail when dad decided to by a car from his old buddy Victor Schrader in Georgia and drive across country home instead of taking the train. Rout 66 across the southwest. Justin and me bouncing around in the back seat must have been a tough ride for the folks.
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| The car in the drive at Walla Walla house. |
* My sister Annah recently told me she remembers the venders coming through our car when we traveled south by train the summer of sixty five.
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