Train Memories I

My friends and readers are getting all excited about our train trip (as are we, of course).

A reader sent me these great train memories.

Enjoy your train ride and New York visit. I had mixed experiences on my recent Amtrak trip to Chicago. On the way down the train was 1.5 hrs. late leaving La Crosse and then arrived in Chicago during rush hour, which meant we had to wait behind the commuter trains.

So the trip, which usually takes 5 hrs (or 4.5 via car) took almost 8. The view is beautiful and nostaligic, though, sliding through the back ends of towns, past old warehouses and depots and people's backyards, where sometimes the kids still run out to wave. Also, this train goes through a lot of farmland.

I saw my first sandhill cranes of the season picking through a corn field in central Wisconsin on the trip back. And on this return trip, which was thankfully on time, a sharply dressed, middle-aged man was randomly handing out Trader Joe's dark chocolate bars, with no apparent agenda.

We started talking. He had just quit his real estate business and was traveling across the country, from New York to Seattle, after spending five months in Hawaii. He remarked on all the wonderful people he'd met on the train and how they could enjoy candid conversations because they'd never meet again. (He also mentioned that sleeper cars were the only way to go on a long journey.)

On a different trip, around October one year, I saw a giant pyramid of cabbages, as big as a house, that some farmer had discarded in the corner of a field.

I hope you see many amazing things and don't suffer Amtrak's delays--or if you do, you don't run out of movies!

Isn't that great? I wouldn't know a sandhill crane if I saw one, so I hope someone will point them out to me, although I think it will be the middle of the night when we are near Chicago.

The train movies are supposed to arrive in today's mail--cutting it awfully close, I know--so I hope the mail gets here before we have to leave the house for our 4 p.m. train. If not, I have a book, "Pope Joan," and also a scarf to knit for Jacqueline, so need to get that done before we reach New York.

Oh, and Younger Son has brought along two WWII movies, his favorite period of history.

@ Jeanne Sather 2008.