Train Travel

With my shiny new bars and a leave that would begin when my train out of Grand Central arrived in Oakland, I anticipated several days of sitting all by myself checking off time zones and just enjoying being a Navy officer. It didn't occur to me that five nights sitting up in a railroad coach might become uncomfortable. If I had, I'd have shrugged them off. Those five days were mine, the first I'd ever had with zero responsibility, and they'd be followed by a very iffy period in some part of the world where I'd be very unwelcome. Until my leave ended, all I needed was to wallow in being an actual officer.

Aboard the N.Y.- Chicago overnighter, everybody smiled, as I pretended not to notice. Furthermore, I was returning to heaven (the city inside the Golden Gate).

Why wasn't I flying? The only planes I'd even seen were the Catalinas passing overhead each evening from Hawaii. They carried mail and a whole six passengers. Daily cross country passenger airlines didn't exist yet.

I'd been smart enough to leave Grand Central on the evening run to Chicago, figuring I'd sleep through the night. I did, and it was well that I had, for when I transferred to the Union Pacific, I acquired a traveling companion who didn't have a ticket, not for the space next to me anyway. Pullmans were literally above my pay scale, and I had casually assumed that I could chair ride my way for the several nights and thousands of miles to home.

There were plenty of others who had scraped pennies together to head west the same way. Three of them boarded at Chicago: a mother and her two really small daughters, whom I guessed to be three and two. They had the seat directly in front of mine. The younger one clung to mother, a small, plump woman whose skin had obviously been toasted by the prairie.

Shy the older one was not. She leaned against the back of her chair, thoroughly studying me. Her eyes strolled over my uniform, sea bag, and cap, even pointing at the doodads on my collar, and squirming to check out my shoes. When, eventually, I smiled, she beamed, her eyes sparkling. Then, in a flash, she was out of her chair and onto the empty space beside me. She fished into my sea bag, holding up various findings for me to identify.

Her mother made a show of disapproval, but she relaxed when I waved her off. She smiled in relieved gratitude. I was about to get some lessons in coping with three year olds.

My friendly flea spent the rest of the day scrutinizing my insignia, my buttons, my pockets, and my cap, eventually wearing it for awhile. She gave an occasional glance out the window at Iowa, which seemed to bore her, then refocused on learning everything Naval. The conductor wasn't worth her time either.  She already knew everything about corn apparently, too. She was equally disinterested in the passengers strolling by to the bathroom.

I did realize that she wouldn't be returning to her mother any time soon. But I hadn’t yet caught on that she had staked all rights to me until the conductor smiled down at her, and she reached up to my arm and pulled on my sleeve. We, she was declaring, are a pair.

And I finally got it when she asked me to take her to the bathroom. Her mother overheard and did her motherly thing, except that I then had the younger child in my lap for awhile. My new attachment did nap occasionally, although her naps were curled up on my lap, or sprawled over my sea bag.

I kept telling myself that Omaha couldn't be too far away. But, actually, it was. By the time we were approaching Omaha, my entire food supply was gone, half in me, half in the child, and I was repeating to myself that this wasn't really so bad, as Omaha was the first major stop ahead. There would be the Rockies and Sierra Nevadas, which I loved. I could last this out.



The West, the real West, was where my heart was, and I'd be following the path of The Mountain Men. I could put up with “Little Miss Perpetual Motion” for a bit longer.

Iowa crept by. The wheels made their monotonous clickety clickety; but the hour hand barely shifted. Telephone poles and scattered trees inched past with no sense of urgency. Omaha seemed to be moving west, too. For a fellow who grew up with sea gulls, turbulent cloudscapes, and the deep rumble of surf, this endless repetition of gently rolling hills of the same color, flat blue skies, in company with dull, bored passengers, weighed heavier and heavier. I needed to close my eyes and day dream. Impossible when a three year old is using you for a playpen.

As I counted the long spaces between minutes, waiting for the conductor to call out, "Omaha," I consoled myself that I would at least have the rest of Nebraska and Utah to sleep until Ogden. I meant to be very awake by Reno where the Sierras would begin - my wonderful land of John Muir! As darkness closed in, the car window presenting only our reflections, the car lights eventually dimming, people slumped into their seats. Newspapers draped over some heads. The night actually passed.

And then it was morning.  Even my wiggle worm had slumbered. A soft pink crept over the undulating fields. The clickety seemed to pick up. My wiggle worm was stretched across my chair, head dangling over the edge, one foot jammed into my midriff. Her sister was mumbling through a dream. Mama was collapsed into a wedged position. From the far end of the car a deep male voice mumbled,

“Omaha.”

Our train slowed with the guttural grumbles of diesel powered pistons bucking the wheels. I leaned forward, telling the mother what lovely daughters she had and how I'd remember this trip.

Mama beamed beatifically as she wrapped up her little one. “Oh, thank you,” she said musically. “But we're going to Cheyenne.”

The crick in my neck hurt again.