Transit

One Sunday, at school in Memphis, in late April of 1976, during the ever present volleyball game, several of us conceived the brilliant notion to travel to Seattle and visit a friend.  We contacted Dan, and he said “come on up”.  So we made plans to do this.  This drunken notion ended changing the course of my life totally, completely, irrevocably, and forever.

School ended around Memorial Day and after a quick trip to Nashville, the four of us gathered at a friend’s apartment to leave Memphis.  We left around five the next morning.  Jeff’s car had a habit of lurching as it started moving.  This characteristic gave it the name of NOT MEMPHIS.  It was as eager to leave as we were.

The plains and prairie held no attraction for us; we burned the miles stopping for little but gas and bathrooms for thirty hours. We Traveled north and then west. By late the next afternoon we found ourselves in the Big Horn Mountains of north central Wyoming.

The Big Horns are a plateau rising 5000 feet off of the high plains.  Many miles before we got to the range we could see the scar of the road we were to travel as it zigzagged up the mountain escarpment.  The top was a lush sub–alpine forest that was greatly un–touristed compared to most of the other mountain areas in the region.  We southern kids reveled in the fact that we had escaped the clutches of Memphis and were on a grand adventure.  We spent a couple of days camping there and exploring the area.  I will never forget the experience of walking up over a rise onto a road and into the middle of a large herd of Elk, or the sound of a bird that flew overhead swooping down – dive bombing clouds of mosquitoes.  I was glad to become re–acquainted with the glories of the west.

From the Big Horns we made our way to the Tetons and Yellowstone.  There we did the normal tourist things for a day or two, pleasant.  Our next stop was Butte Montana where we stayed outside of the town in the national forest.  We woke up the next morning to several inches of snow – not that unusual for the area, but something our southern asses did not expect or want. 

We got the hell out of Butte and did not stop until we were on the east side of the Cascades.  We made camp beside the Tieton River and spent a drunken day reveling in the warmth of Eastern Washington.  We then prepared to descend into the Puget Sound Region.  The next afternoon we met up with Dan and began our summer sojourn in Seattle.  In short, over that summer I fell in love with the place and knew that I had to spend more time than one brief summer there.

That August I found myself having to leave Seattle to return east to finish school.  One more semester and I would be finished with Memphis.  It was hard to believe that in an earlier time I had actually wanted to be there.  Somehow it had been transformed into “‘Memphis’ – God damned swamp”.

Anyway a few more months and I would be done with the place…

I rode home on the train called the ‘Empire Builder’ to Chicago then I was to catch the ‘Floridian’ back to Nashville.  This was the first of what was to become many train trips I have taken.  I left Seattle on a glorious sunny afternoon and quickly gravitated to the dome car and watched the Cascades parade by.  Stampede Pass was noted as we passed through the tunnel at the summit.  We then traveled to Columbia River and then up the Snake River valley; aside from its beauty I noted the many rock fall fences along the tracks.  I fell in love with this mode of travel. 

Early the next morning, I got off the train at West Glacier and then walked into the Glacier National Park to begin a three day hike into the wilds of the park.  I got my permit for a trail some distance away from West Glacier so I hitched to trail head and began to trudge up the hill.  It had begun to rain and the forecast was for it to be rainy for several days.  After an hour or so I realized that my heart just not in it; I turned around.

After I made it to the highway I went east over Marias Pass to East Portal.  I had been here eight years before, with the Boy Scouts, on my first trip west; we had stopped there to eat lunch.  The main thing I remembered about the stop was the glorious blue and white Great Northern locomotive parked beside the station, across the road from where we ate.  While in East Portal I changed my ticket and ate. 

I then hitched west back over the pass to West Glacier to wait for the next morning’s train.  I got a ride from a kindly park employee who was the fire chief for the park.  We stopped to check on a site that had been the location of the ‘Rainbow Family’ gathering shortly before.  Finding all was well we made it back to West Glacier.  It was, by then, late afternoon.  I dropped my pack off at the station then explored the village – ending up at a tavern where I drank a beer with a group of scientists and students who were working in the park. 

That night I attempted to sleep in the train station on a hard bench.  I probably got a little sleep, but it was difficult when each one of many freight train’s arrival was heralded by a loud ring from an announcer bell.  Around six the next morning the ‘Empire Builder’ returned to West Glacier, and I re–boarded the train.

I settled down to a long trek across the northern plains up in a dome car.  Here I was able to reflect on what had happen to me that summer.  My resolve to return to Seattle was confirmed and strengthened by my reflections. 

I met up with a group of kids who were returning east after a long bicycle trek in the mountains and we talked and entertained each other as the rails slid under us.  I slept on the floor in the dome car that second night and froze in the heavy air conditioning.  That next afternoon we arrived in Chicago, a little late – my fellow travelers were fretting over their connection for their destination further east.  The ‘Floridian’, my train, did not leave until late that night so I did not neeed to worry. 

I was able to spend a few hours bumming around downtown Chicago.  Unexpectedly I came to like the place.  It was quite warm, much warmer than I had experienced in Seattle all summer, but it was still cooler than normal for the east in early August.  After eating at McDonalds (something I have done every time I have been in Chicago) I made my way back to Union Station and boarded my train.  After the ‘Empire Builder’ the ‘Floridian’ seemed somewhat shabby.  I was able to sleep on this train and the next morning woke up the soft Kentucky landscape floating by the window.  I had been careful with my money so I treated myself to a traditional L&N breakfast of country ham and blueberry somethings in the diner.  This was one of the best meals I have ever eaten as I ate watching Kentucky and Tennessee pass by…

I was treated to nice cool snap in Nashville.  This made for a bearable transition to the East’s sticky climate.  Unfortunately a week or so later when I returned to Memphis the sticky was back in all of it glory.  After staying with a friend for the few days I found an apartment a mile or so from the campus and moved in for my last semester.  I was taking a class at the Art Academy across the street from school.  This required me to be in Memphis two or three weeks early.  This was good in that I found that apartment easily and was able to secure a job with campus security to help pay the bills.  I worked a rotating shift patrolling campus usually late at night or early in the morning.  With most of my friends graduated and gone it was a melancholy time.  I was left largely alone with my thoughts…

The highlight of the semester was the opportunity to return to Chicago with the Art Academy to visit the Art Institute of Chicago. We stated at the Palmer House and spent most of the weekend at the institute.  It became and remains my favourite art museum in the country.  Friday afternoon we were able to see prints from the photo vaults of the museum.  I learned so much looking at and holding those prints from the masters that afternoon.  Sunday night the train trip back was a wild affair in addition to the hundred or so art students there were hundreds of other kids heading down state to Champaign–Urbana and Carbondale.  The bar car got so rowdy that the bar keep closed the bar… about an hour too late.

That December saw the end of my time in Memphis.  A fitting coda was an incident that happened a day or so before I left.  It was a Saturday night and I had just finished the absolutely last task I had to do for the semester, and my college career.  As I sat in my apartment, in the quiet, with a window open, next door a neighbor was calling for her cat…  I heard:  Freedom… …Freedom… Freedom… Freedom… …Freedom…

After Christmas I worked for manpower to earn a grubstake to be used for the return to Seattle.  At first it was hard, but I did land a plum assignment painting a new UPS terminal.  The constant work and the opportunity for considerable overtime filled my bank account quickly.  By early March I was able to return to what was becoming my second home.

I planned to take the train back across the country.  At that time AMTRAK offered a two week rail pass allowing unlimited rail travel for 160 dollars.  So I traveled to Seattle from Nashville via Memphis, St Louis, Syracuse, New York City, San Francisco, and Portland.

Because of a lack of a connection to St Louis I had to board the train in Memphis.  This necessitated a bus trip to Memphis.  I left Nashville on a Sunday afternoon.   As I sat on the bus looking out the window at my parents standing, stoically against a wall waiting for my ‘Final’ departure from Nashville as my home, I saw a young couple standing next to them.  They were obviously the parents of a young boy in the seat in front of me.  They were valiantly trying to entertain the boy and keep up his and their spirits as he left.  The contrast of me leaving for would be the last time and his leaving, for possibly the first time, and both sets of parents was overwhelming.  I was touched and overwhelmed with emotion.

That evening I arrived in Memphis as an independent adult having broken the ties to Nashville and home.  I spent several days lounging and saying good bye to the friends that were left there.  It was unseasonably warm and sunny – perfect for hanging out in the quad outside the dorms.  Mid week I caught the ‘Panama Limited’ for Effingham, Illinois where I would transfer to the ‘National Limited’ to St. Louis. 

In St. Louis I visited a friend from Memphis who was in law school there.  It was a good visit, except for how Kathy was in a full fledge manic episode in the beginning of her hellish life of mental illness.  I did not notice this however, and I found out only later when she disappeared due to being hospitalized.  From St. Louis I traveled to Chicago, before going on to Syracuse on the ‘Lake Shore Limited’.  A visit to the Art Institute was squeezed in during the lay over, where I ran into my former ‘dorm dad’ just outside of “the room” – a large gallery filled with a most impressive collection of impressionist, post impressionist, and early modern art to be seen anywhere. 

Syracuse was the venue for a visit with a former roommate and his lover who was in graduate school there.  It was very cold and snowy.  From there New York City, visiting relatives where I tasted New York street life and the art museums.  The highlight was the water lily paintings and paper constructions of Monet and Picasso’s painting ‘Guernica’.  On the whole though, I was disappointed in the New York museums and the city as well.  I preferred Chicago and its Institute.

Leaving New York on the third evening I began the longest leg of my journey.  The first part was a return to Chicago through Pennsylvania.  This was really the only unpleasant train trip of the journey.  The train was crowded and filled with unpleasant people.  I arrived in Chicago in the early afternoon and had a four or five hour layover, so I went back to the Art Institute.  That evening I boarded the ‘Zephyr’ for the west coast.  This was to be the longest leg of the journey.  There was a dome car on the first part of the leg so I spent the evening in the dome watching the signals ‘drop’ from red to yellow to green and then back to red as we passed them.  The next morning we stopped in Denver where the train was switched, removing the dome car and turning the train around. 

The trip to Cheyenne saw us pulled ‘backwards’ to minimize the backup moves in Cheyenne.  From there we raced across the plains of  southern Wyoming.  Lacking a dome car to look out of, I moved to the bar car to read and watch it all go by.  There I met a gentleman taking his grandson on a train trip.  We started a conversation where he described growing up in the area during World War II.  He had led an adventuresome life then.  Little held him back, even gas rationing.  When he needed gas he knew where there was a wrecked tank car full of aviation gas available for the taking.  After that wonderful afternoon of conversation he and his grandson got off the train in Rock Springs and I continued on to the Bay Area.

The next morning we crossed over Donner Pass and I was filled with wonder and contentment as we swayed through the curves of the mountain tracks and dropped down into the central valley.  After leaving Sacramento we traveled through the Sacramento delta and alongside the upper bay.  I had been on a train for more or less five days.  I spent those last few hours in the vestibule, with the Dutch door half open, smelling the fresh pacific salt air – utterly content.  In San Francisco I visited yet another Memphis school friend and got a quick look at the city. 

Two nights later I got on a bus to take me across the bay to board the Coast Starlight to take me up the coast to Oregon. This was the craziest leg of the voyage.  There in Oakland were several hundred college students returning from spring break. They were headed to just about every college between the bay area and Vancouver B.C. After a rather raucous night carousing with them in the full length super dome car, I woke up to the sight of Mt. Shasta which meant that we were several hours late, but that was a good thing.  It allowed for our passage thru the southern Oregon Cascades in daylight.  So my fellow travelers and I entertained ourselves and watched the somewhat snowy landscape pass us by.  I was having a wonderful time.  I simply do not know of another better way to travel that what we had that morning. 

I arrived in Portland late that afternoon and had one last good short visit with Memphis friends., I knew that I would be back to Portland frequently.  The following afternoon I re–boarded the Starlight and that evening reached Seattle.  It was the end of March.  I climbed the stairs from the terminal to Fourth Avenue, excited that I had reached my destination.  I looked up at the Smith Tower and then caught the number nine bus to the little house on Mercer that would be my home for the next year.

There would be other trips back and forth between Seattle and Tennessee, but all of them would be round trips.  Many would have interesting moments, but none would hold the promise of the new or the independence of these trips.

Finally in 1987 I flew back to Nashville one last time.  I wept as we passed below the summit of Mt. Rainier giving some intrepid climber the odd treat of looking down on a flying airliner.