It is
seldom that my father reminisces with me about his childhood antics and
adventures but recently the subject of trains came up and he started talking
about riding the train from Fort Worth to Chico to spend the summer with his
grandparents.
He couldn’t give me an exact age, just that he was a young boy.
“I was a little kid,” he said “They would put me on the train and the conductor would look out for me.”
I have a picture in my mind of a lanky young boy with wavy auburn hair and freckles boarding the train looking back to his parents for reassurance before accepting the conductor’s outreached hand to embark on his adventure.
Chico is about 60 miles from Fort Worth, so the journey was likely a couple of hours. Knowing my grandmother, she probably packed him something to eat on the trip – maybe a sandwich or a slice of the wonderfully sweet and fragrant pound cake I remember so well. There was a hint of almond flavor, deep brown crusty edges that melted in your mouth and a firm moist texture that would have only been spoiled with a frosting.
He didn’t go into much detail about his solo rail experience, but I can imagine that once he was safely deposited in Chico he would spend his days on the farm basking in the ample doting of loving grandparents. There would be chores but also the freeing wide-open spaces to wander and explore – a departure from life in town. The air would smell fresher, the food more flavorful, and sleep more restful after a full day outdoors.
When I was growing up plane travel was increasing popularity and affordability and the shiny silver passenger cars filled with a blur of mysterious faces headed to unknown destinations that so piqued my curiosity were disappearing.
Until a couple of years ago, I had never traveled anywhere by train. My maiden trip was from Fort Worth to Temple.
It was a Sunday afternoon, a clear autumn day, and the route from Fort Worth to Austin brought sleepy college students still feeling the affects of their weekend partying. While they appeared to have the best of intentions to use the travel time studying, those efforts waned as they succumbed to sleep leaving textbooks and notepad strewn across the seats before the train ever left the station.
Other passengers adjusted, settled into books and magazines, but once the gentle rocking of the cars was underway, the novels and biographies were abandoned for the mesmerizing view of the Fort Worth factories and train yard.
Like traveling on a commercial airline, there was a tray table (locked in its upright position) and the seat pocket held a laminated card illustrating the safety features of the “luxury liner” but without instructions to use the seat cushion as a flotation device, oxygen mask information or drawings of emergency inflatable slides for escape. It was mostly common sense advice – don’t get off a moving train, don’t stand on the tracks or encourage a child to do so (as if someone would do that).
The engineer announced our departure, tickets were collected and the train crept from the station with a back and forth boat-like rocking motion. Amid the silence of sleeping students, only the whistle and the rumble of the wheels down the tracks and across the ties could be heard. Moving under the Mixmaster and past the massive complex of grain elevators it was easy to become lost in a time warp - to imagine an era when the yard was bustling with activity instead of littered with broken windows and idle train cars waiting for the call to service.
The train picked up speed as it crossed the first intersection at Morningside Drive and on past cluttered backyards of broken down old houses with rusty chain-link fences and oblivious children playing in the sunshine. Dorm-like project housing gave way to green parks trimmed in red-tipped shrubs. Colorful graffiti covered the concrete walls of the underpasses.
Through town, past the Sycamore Airfield, cemeteries, gas wells and cattle grazing on open land cars sat patiently at crossings waiting for the train to pass. A small herd of goats wandered through a field of 20-plus rusted tractors led by a shaggy Shetland pony and fall was visible as the light filtered through the yellow and orange leaves. As the speed increased, the landscape swept by – a blur of leaves and branches lining the tracks.
