go west!
![[Train approaching a crossing]](images/crossing.jpg)
On
board Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited, West of Palmer, Massachusetts,
Sunday, October 6, 1996. The fall colors are spectacular: brilliant
yellows and reds gleam in the red-orange light of the dying day. The sky
is a perfect clear blue. I am on my way to the NAB Radio Show in Los
Angeles. Ooh, Interstate Nuclear Services slides by on the right... nuke
'em 'til they glow! Massachusetts is so beautiful in the fall: gushing
rivers, ancient brick buildings, wide, clear lakes reflecting the sky like
giant sheets of glass. Tagson Construction, a sign proclaims. Westraco
Engineering. There are two radio towers across a soccer field on the
right; is that the old WBZA?
Gas guzzlers on I-291. This is Springfield, home of Smith & Wesson and the Springfield rifle. Abandoned factories appear on the right, the grave markers of industrial New England. Milepost 98. The sun is just down; the west glows orange. We pull into Springfield station. The conductor warns that a large crowd is about to board; the train is sold out. This is one of the trains the jackasses in Washington want to cut. Kennedy and Kerry have saved it at least for now. As for the governor, he doesn't seem to care about anything but highways. It grows dark...
The summer was cold and wet; so too is the fall. At this rate it looks like we'll have another winter like last year's with another nine feet of snow. Is global warming behind this? There are no more honeybees in the Boston area. They seem to have died out entirely in the northeast due to some kind of parasitic mite. "Big Y" proclaims a sign on a building to the right. The eastbound Lake Shore was about an hour late. There is a Hoot! and we begin to pull out of Springfield. This train and No. 448 are the only trains running between here and Boston. Why, it's the Springfield Newspapers. We screech to a halt beside a building twelve stories tall and quite abandoned; most of its windows are broken. We seem to be switching tracks... again we stop. A sign in huge red letters proclaims:
B U S
Perhaps Amtrak could do with one that says, "T R A I N"-- but I forget that these trains are usually sold out, so there'd be no point in trying to attract any more passengers. Lurch! We start. There is indeed a bus station, serving both Greyhound and Peter Pan. We cross the broad Connecticut River; it glows blue and orange in the fading twilight. We cross a highway; there's not much traffic. We creep through Conrail's West Springfield yard. Here auto racks and truck trailers stand silhouetted in red-orange. We pass Conrail's tower; there are snowplows.
There is a private car on this train, a round-end observation car lettered for the West Texas and Buffalo Railroad. Old factories, a satellite dish slide by on the right. It is mostly dark now, and black trees stand against a gray-blue sky. Tomorrow I will wake up in Cleveland; we'll find out how Bill's doing.
The Lake Shore Limited Cleveland, Ohio Monday, October 7, 1996. I awake amid relics of days long gone. Uhlman Car Company, a sign on a dead factory announces. We're moving through a huge, virtually empty Conrail yard. At the far side there is a power plant or some such, seemingly long deserted, whose smokestacks carry the letters
Y
C
R
R
Of course, it was probably originally "N Y C R R", for this was the main line of the New York Central, the famous Water Level Route. Here is a coaling station, for God's sake. Lake Erie appears on the right. The train is moving like the proverbial bat out of hell, so it's difficult to write legibly. We are slowing now; we sweep past a line of parked freight cars on the right. Cleveland has light rail! When did that happen? It was certainly not there two years ago. Here is the old Browns stadium; I understand they're going to tear it down soon.
The Plain Dealer is endorsing two Democrats, has nothing good to say about Bob Dole, and calls Gingrich the best friend the Democrats ever had. This is amazing; when I was here two years ago it sang a different song.
Elyria appears. Light puffy clouds dot the blue sky, forming lines in places. The trees here are not as far gone as those in Massachusetts. We pass Amherst Township Hall and Garage... Riddle Hardware... Amherst Party Shop... Amherst Manor. I wonder how they pronounce it (Am-Hurst, probably). Milepost 216 (from where?), and some bozo on railroad property is taking pictures of the train. Here are boats in some sort of river... First Merit E.S.T. Bank. Corn fields! New Country Corn Flakes, New Country Corn Flakes, New Country Corn Flakes, they're made from corn.
Ohio is a strange place, neither industrial fish nor agricultural fowl. This looks like Breadbasket country. Uh-oh, Christmas trees. Pepsi-Cola, proclaims a sign. We pass a swamp; there aren't going to be any turtles today. Amber Milling Company... another river... the Huron Cement Products Company. Milepost 234 (not from New York, surely?). Re-elect Pre$$ler Treasurer; elect Jim Long Sheriff. The Maples Motel. I see an egret! Here's the Sandusky Drive-in Theater; he be dead. Now here's an airfield with a runway that looks like it goes right into the lake. Betsy Wakefield for probate judge.
Something smells very odd-- spicy. There's a heron, and a field with about a zillion Canada geese. Sandusky Steel and Supply Company... Brohl & Appel Incorporated... S&J Mini Warehousing... Hamm's Beer: Refreshing as the Land of Sky-Blue Waters. We slow; we stop at the bricked-up Sandusky depot. It is an old New York Central stone station not unlike those at Newton Center and Newton Highlands, but this one is bigger, and there's a big cell-phone tower to the right. The Capitol Limited comes through here too, but I don't know if it stops here. Here's Christ Christian Center (isn't that a bit redundant?) and gravestones, lots of them.... Lake Erie Arts and Crafts... Sandusky Vinyl Products... Milepost 243... Union Chain U.S. Tsubaki. We have come again to the lake; there's a bunch of birds out in the middle. It's too small to be Lake Erie, so it must be some sort of bay. Mallards. Many mallards. We cross a drawbridge. Lammer's Inn: Draft Beer. A truck on the evil Interstate declares itself the Pepsi Express. Express to Pepsi? Here's a big hawk sitting in a dead tree. Share Care: People Helping People. There are mostly trees here, no more dead factories. This was never industrial heartland. Why put a wooden goose on your front lawn? What's the point?
Epsom Tabernacle Church. Pratt & Lambert Paint. Again the lake. This is Lake Erie; Canada is over the horizon to the north. A red-winged blackbird tries to keep pace with the train. He gives up, poor soul. Port Clinton Yacht Charters; here, at last, is Bill given proper respect. Here is a vacant field with lots of little blue, white, and yellow flowers. A nuke looms to the right; who needs whales? There are high-voltage power lines running off towards the lake.
We approach Toledo. Here is the Great Lakes Terminal Warehouse; "General Merchandise and Cold Storage" it proclaims. We arrive at Toledo station; there's a big blue private car named "Cleveland" on the right. The station has been given a face-lift; it's not all rusted out like it was two years ago.
On board the Southwest Chief, West of Dodge City, Kansas Tuesday, October 8, 1996. The plains are foggy and wet. There's not much to see but cows and corn. There are lots of folks on the train headed for Albuquerque for the International Hot Air Balloon Festival. We pass some oil wells; you don't usually think of oil and Kansas in the same breath. Lots o' cows. The sun tries valiantly to break through the fog, but fails. There's weird white stuff growing amid the grass. More cows; a hawk flies by. Now the first patch of blue appears in the sky; the sun may yet win. Not so Bob Dole; he's still twenty points down in the polls. Let's hope he stays there. More blue, and the sun breaks through at last. The land here seems flat, yet my ears were popping when I awoke under starry skies this morning. We must therefore be climbing; the plains must not be as flat as they seem. It's Burlington Northern and Santa Fe now. Horses!
"We're Burlington Northern Santa Fe, parlez-vous?
We're Burlington Northern Santa Fe, parlez-vous?
We're Burlington Northern Santa Fe, so ship and travel all the way!
Hickey-dickey, parlez-vous?"
La Junta, Colorado. The sky is bright blue and cloud-free; Bob Dole's Kansas fog is long gone. We have undergone a crew change and are about to get underway. I suppose we are on Mountain time now, although nobody's said anything about it. There's a huge railroad yard here; I don't know what else people here do for a living but a lot of them must work for the railroad. The depot bears an old Santa Fe logo; so does the water tank in the yard. Only the presence of Burlington Northern hopper cars amid the Santa Fe cars testifies to the recent merger of the two companies. Our train, which is of course run by Amtrak, carries no fewer than six boxcars of mail. Now we're moving, picking up speed as we leave the town behind.
Eastern Colorado is hard to tell from Kansas. Perhaps there are a few more cows here, not quite as many corn and wheat fields. I don't think this train travels quite as fast as it did a couple of years ago. Maybe Burlington Northern has something to do with that, or maybe not. Plains, cows and trees now dominate the scenery. There's a herd on the southern horizon silhouetted against the sky. Santa Fe was a class act; it's a shame they're gone. These railroad companies need to understand that they will be judged by the way they treat people even if they make most of their money moving freight. If they only allow one train a day on this line and it's always late then who needs Burlington Northern? The age is coming where good corporate citizenship will be essential to a healthy bottom line. And that's as it should be.
The land has changed; now we are traveling past mesas and sagebrush-infested valleys. We are near the edge of the Great Plains; there are no trees or farm fields here, and even cattle seem to be few. An occasional tree appears near a dry river-bed. What a change this is from Dodge City! Horses again... of what use is a horse nowadays? Perhaps these are wild horses I see. They certainly don't mind the train's noisy intrusion into their peace and quiet.
A freight train with an Amtrak logo is not the Broadway Limited. However, a mixed train with such a logo is certainly the Southwest Chief. Now that Santa Fe is no more I am surprised they do not call it the Super Chief. No duck may be fucked for Harvard here; there are no ducks, and Harvard is just a vague legend, a Camelot on the Charles. An ominous white bulbous shape appears on the southwestern horizon, a great dome or sphere containing, no doubt, some devilry. There are yellow flowers (daisies?) everywhere, and what looks like goldenrod among the desert grasses. I see cacti, miniature cacti, a sure sign that we have left the Kansas Republicans and their wheat fields behind. My ears are popping again; perhaps it was not a good idea to undertake this trip with a cold.
An old railroad bed joins us on the left: a once prosperous branch line, perhaps, fallen victim to the greedy gas-guzzler, or maybe an earlier route of the present line. In the desert there is no evil; here there are only cows, and there is no evil in a cow nor any stain of sin in the land-- but I speak too soon, for here is a highway lousy with gas-guzzling trucks. The white bulbous object has reappeared; it is a water tower, and it stands in some sort of military installation. A tank stands guard at the approach to the base. In the distance that might be a mountain looming. It is, for to its right are two snow-capped peaks. Between here and there is a great expanse of brown flat land dotted with short shrubs and, here and there, some cattle. Perhaps the snow I see on the mountains is an illusion, just bare ground reflecting the sun. Now here is some water, and farmland planted with something I do not recognize. It is green and grows close to the ground. Here they are making bales of hay. I see a yellow tree, and more gas-guzzlers.
"Gus Gazzler here for Mobil Oil."
"Don't you hate winter? Don't you long for the days of the Carboniferous, those wonderful warm wet years when all was right with the world: no crime, no war, no taxes? Vote Republican, and together let's turn back the clock to a happier time when ammonites and trilobites frolicked in warm, shallow seas, when placoderms played in the young oceans and Eryops was king of the land."
Yep, six mail cars; junk mail, mostly, not the time-sensitive first-class stuff...
"Kill more trees, guzzle more gas, and come back with us on a ride through memory lane..."
To the left is a valley of yellow and green trees, green fields, and above them, great mountain peaks, but to the right is a vast boring brown wasteland. Which do you choose: the left or the right? For once, though, it looks like the people are going to choose the true path of Bill. The train is turning to the left; so should we all.
This sure isn't anywhere back East; there are hardly any trees. It might be California, though. The Sierra foothills sometimes look like this. More horses. A yellow tree in a green field. Now there's a veritable forest of trees green and yellow, and farms, even corn fields. We are coming into Trinidad, and an odd flat-topped mountain looms to the left. Another railroad crosses over ours. Danger Gas: what kind of gas do you suppose that is? The flat peak to the left is called Fisher's Peak. We pass through a railroad yard almost empty but for some Canadian National flat cars. NW Transport Service, Inc... The Purgatory River. We stop briefly.
There is a park to the right. E.K. Birdwell Cleaning Aids; Pizza Hut; McDonald's. Hunting and Fishing Licenses, a sign announces. Here is Trinidad Mines Stadium and a large geodesic dome. Baseball been very very good... there are many yellow trees here. A horse, a horse! Something weird to the left; it looks like an antitank barrier. Now we move past many parked freight cars on the right. Lots o' horses here... goldenrod among the rocks; pine woods and a bright yellow tree on the left. We creep slowly upwards at perhaps twenty miles an hour. A stone outhouse!
Fisher's Peak is very close now; stumpy little pines cover its shoulders. Mico's, a discarded sign reads. To the right is an evil Interstate; there's not a whole lot of gas being guzzled today, though. I see a cow on the ground and useless, discarded farm machinery, witnesses to the sad state of family farming in America no doubt. Three horses eye the train warily. Road closed; sorry, jerk, you can't go through the pass this way. Purple flowers amid white; let's head 'em off at the pass. Oh the prices go up, up, up, and the values go down, down, down... Look at all the rock they had to blast away to get the stupid highway through the pass. Now there are mostly pines where there are any trees, and grass and goldenrod where there are not. Here's a beaver dam; where the hell did those fat little rodents get the sticks and branches? Exit 6, Gallinas, 1/4 mile. The dirt road on the right is the old Santa Fe Trail unless I be mistaken.
We are switchbacking up the mountainside; here's some guy in a truck facing the wrong way, and there's a much more impressive beaver dam. A Mack truck passes the train; its sign declares "farm fresh catfish." Four miles to somewhere, says a highway sign. Morley, reads another sign, and Notice: this is private property. Trespassers are warned to keep off, signed the A.T. & S.F. RY. CO. Hey, don't they know it's Burlington Northern now? On the right is what looks like an old Spanish mission, long dead. Here's a Santa Fe truck parked the wrong way; they're working on the track to the right. Fisher's Peak is very close now; it is square, flat, and looks like it might have been the site of an evil lord's castle, some Barad-Dur of the Rockies. Lunch time!
This is New Mexico: red soil, yellow goldenrod, green pines, and clear blue sky. My ears are popping again. We stopped in Raton and then in Las Vegas next to the once prosperous but now deserted Castaneda Hotel. We are passing through Glorieta, and the depot here has been turned into a post office. The eastbound Chief that just passed us had a private car attached, a dome car in an unrecognizable red and white livery. There should be more trains on this route. I see purple flowers against red earth; what sort of rock is this?
There is none of the hurt of last year's trip, just peace. I felt a vague pang, the ghost of something I felt had been haunting Union Station for some time, but it is gone now. That which is past cannot harm me. Look there: Democratic donkeys! This is Lamy; you have to take a bus from here to Santa Fe. I believe Albuquerque is next; we'll be there in an hour or two. Is that smog on the hillside? It certainly looks like it.
We are in Indian country now; there are beehive-shaped brick ovens behind most of the houses I see. We are fast approaching another evil Interstate, and this one teems with gas-wasters. It is I-25, and we are on the threshold of Albuquerque. Even the hero gets a bullet in the chest, oo-woo, once upon the time in the West. Uncork the enchantment: New Mexico wines. What, grapes? In the desert? Bill Hayden, Republican, is running for something. This is your country on Republicanism; any questions? Pueblo of Sandia. A hot-air balloon rises on the horizon, a precursor of the Festival to come. Holy shit, here's a five-tower directional array! Several more balloons appear, drifting lazily across the valley. We're coming into the city now. "Home of the Panthers:" what do you suppose that is? Albuquerque Station; we stop. Nothing interesting on the adjacent tracks, unlike last time when there were some cars from Santa Fe's business fleet.
Union Station Los Angeles, California Saturday, October 12, 1996. This has been a disappointing convention. The theme was "Operation Consolidation: Radio Declares War On All Other Media." Radio Ink magazine had a self-propelled gun and a machine gun set up outside their tent... err, booth. Fuck the generals! Damn Karmazin and the horse... err, tank, he rode in on... Radio declares war against small business! Radio declares war against the listening public! Radio declares WAR against its own best interests! What exactly do the pigeons in here eat, anyway? Despite all the renovations pigeons still fly around inside the station....
Snippets of conversations reach my ears as I wait for my train home:
"...sure saw a lot of bear dung on our last hike... why don't you go to Hollywood? HOL-ly-wood!... you've got to do something tonight... I'm going to leave for Santa Barbara in 25 minutes... remember, I said, AAAH! they sound like chickens... oh, you don't want to call, OK. I've got my water bear... right... what's your name? I'm Wanda... make it six o'clock, old buddy! I don't want to wear my welcome out the first time... they are the nicest ladies... she's a nice looking lady... oh that little thing? she was cute... I think the weather will be nice... we had two days of rain... baaaaad!... we worked together in Solvang for seven years... there's only enough room for tea... she was smoking marijuana; I could smell it.... you would know it if you smelled it..."