Archive
07/01/10 - (3)
Riding the Trains
Yesterday, a matchless, brilliant-blue Wednesday afternoon, I sat, for an hour and a half, in a heavyweight passenger coach, Number 33 (in gold leaf), to be exact, built, in 1918, For the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range Railway, Specifically for service on its Hibbing and Ely/Winton route...
Sat amidst the remnants of its once-plush interiors — Faded, worn, blue-velour seat cushions, unoriginal light fixtures, Black cast-iron overhead baggage racks, Walnut-trimmed walls, wood-framed windows, Clerestory-glass ventilators in the cathedral ceiling...
Sat, as a fatigued, maroon-and-yellow Soo Line diesel switcher Hauled it and three dilapidated later vintages, filled with tourists, A few leisurely miles north of Duluth's 1892 depot, Along Superior's shoreline, as far as the suburb of Lakeside, Then back into silence, the sad reality of its cessation...
Sat in that wondrous army-green relic of the steam-locomotive era, As its steel wheels clattered their clackety-clack chatter Over tracks poorly joined after so many years of neglect, Years of deterioration, years of relegation to an obsolete past... Sat like a ten-year-old on his first train ride, mesmerized...
Sat until the swayings, bouncings, heavings, lurchings of the car, The scraping and screeching of metal against metal, Made me a truly exuberant believer, all over again, Transported me to the beginning of my summer-camp odyssey, Which would last from 1951 to 1968...
Sat by the window I'd slid up, to sniff the gravel bed, wildflowers, Listen to the air, escaping break hoses, hiss, And suddenly I was that kid again, that Swamper Four camper, Taking the GM&O Abraham Lincoln, from St. Louis to Chicago, The musty pre-WWII C&NW Pullman charter, overnight,
To its makeshift stop at Hawthorne, Wisconsin, Stepping from the vestibule, into a frigid, misty 6:30 a.m., Into the tall grass mixed with Queen Anne's lace, lupines, yarrow, Into the two-month mystique that was Camp Nebagamon for Boys, Into the enchanted land to which I'm still returning, six decades later.
07/01/10 - (3)
|
|||
|
|||
