The Train I Ride

For your enjoyment, play the Elvis tune below while reading today's musing!

One of my hobbies has always been riding the rails. At a young age I hazily remember when my family moved from Richmond to Atlanta. We left the Richmond Broad Street station, a cavernous edifice built in the golden age of railroad travel. Through the smell of dirty steam and  burnt brake pads, the porters yelling over the hissing and idling of the engine, we climbed the diamond steel plate steps into the quiet sanctuary of the Pullman sleeping car. The fact that there was a sink in the room, that there were booths that changed into beds, with crisp white sheets, made by a man in uniform with a badge that made me think he was the sheriff,  seemed so cool to a ~nine year old. That a man could actually work on a train…how cool...after that I wanted to live on a train. What I didn’t know that while the pay was very low by the standards of the day, and in an era of significant racial prejudice, being a Pullman porter was one of the best jobs available for African American men at that time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_porte

Southbound, rocking on the rails in a bunk with crisp sheets, a lonesome whistle a wailing through the confederate night, steaming oatmeal in the dining car in the morning, and then descending the dirty diamond steel steps to an unknown city, leaving an old life behind for greener pastures. Ah movin' on. At nine, I was now officially hooked on leaving.

Site of Camp Yonanoka, bulldozed several years ago.

A few years later, my family sent me to a camp in western North Carolina, outside of picturesque Linville. We drove to Charlottesville and I left from this very station and my bags were put on this very baggage cart, which has sat there, unloved and unnoticed by busy travelers, for some forty years.

Charlottesville Train Station, built in 1885. My bags going to camp (it was Southern Railway then) were put on this old cart...AMTRAK uses golf carts now.

Mountains, overnight train trips and moving on...it was great. Later, in high school, we caught the old C & O from Alexandria, which was a few passenger cars on the back of a freight train, with the Pullman waiters making our 16 year old asses gin and tonics....and how cool was that? We were on our way to Easter's http://blog.hamptonterrace.com/bid/45076/The-Best-Party-in-America-1975-Easters-Revisited-Pt-1 weekend at the University of Virginia, where in a fraternity house, I saw a beautiful co-ed, naked as the day she came into this world, in a trash can of grape juice and grain alcohol, totally stained purple and I might add, totally unconcerned and apparently blissfully unaware that she was in fact naked in a tub of "purple jesus" and that she was stained purple and that she was in the middle of a raging frat party at what 1975 Playboy called the best party in the country and that the band was ripping through "I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll".  I thought at the time,"man, this is where I want to come to school".

Gentle reader, I digress. Over the years, I continued to take train trips. Kansas City/Seattle/ San Fransisco, which passed by a week old newly erupted Mt. Helen's.  Adelaide to Perth, Australia, where my buddy and I got drunk and passed out twice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Australian_Railway traveling over the longest stretch of railway or road in, well somewhere. Paris to Barcelona, with a girlfriend, and then 5 years later with my brother and 16 year old son, delighted that the French railway SNCF, offered two civilized seatings for dinner, one at 10:00 PM and the other at midnight. Dude, at 10:00 PM on AMTRAK, you'd be lucky to get a bag of peanuts, much less the veal. Charlottesville to Chicago, spend the night at the Drake, and do the return trip the next day, several times with kids, alone and an ex-wife. One time with the kids, ostensibly on our way to Niagara Falls, I decided, without too much protest from their double room up the aisle, that the 4:00 AM arrival at the falls was simply unacceptable and ungodly as an arrival hour; so I talked to the conductor, finding out how far this baby rolled, paid some money to continue snoozing in our compartments to Albany, New York and ta-dah: a different family vacation, now kids it's Saratoga Springs, instead of the meticulously planned Niagara Falls trip, just like that.  Eastbound, rocking on the rails in a bunk with crisp sheets, a lonesome whistle a wailing through the industrial northeast night, steaming oatmeal in the dining car in the morning, and then descending the dirty diamond steel plate steps to an unknown city, leaving an old life behind for greener pastures. Ah movin' on. At fifty, I was hooked.

I hear the train a comin'
It's rollin' 'round the bend,
And I ain't seen the sunshine,
Since, I don't know when,
I'm stuck in Folsom Prison,
And time keeps draggin' on,
But that train keeps a-rollin',
On down to San Antone.

When I was just a baby,
My Mama told me, "Son,
Always be a good boy,
Don't ever play with guns,"
But I shot a man in Reno,
Just to watch him die,
When I hear that whistle blowin',
I hang my head and cry.

I bet there's rich folks eatin',
In a fancy dining car,
They're probably drinkin' coffee,
And smokin' big cigars,
But I know I had it comin',
I know I can't be free,
But those people keep a-movin',
And that's what tortures me.

Well, if they freed me from this prison,
If that railroad train was mine,
I bet I'd move out over a little,
Farther down the line,
Far from Folsom Prison,
That's where I want to stay,
And I'd let that lonesome whistle,
Blow my blues away.

Unknown trails, unknown places, leaving an old life behind for greener pastures. Ah, movin' on. At fifty five I was hooked.