“Trains tap into some deep American collective memory.”
Today is is dark and damp, grim looking. Nothing is moving in the thick, still air. I’m going nowhere today. I’m not even getting dressed today.
I got to celebrate yesterday. I spent the afternoon with friends. We sat outside around the table and talked, caught up with each other. We dined on cheeseburgers and potato salad, the perfect July 4th foods. It was quiet yesterday, no firecrackers, but I had heard the bangs the night before, late the night before. Neither the cats nor the dog were bothered by the bangs. Henry slept right through.
When I was a kid, summer days felt endless. I was up and gone early, sometimes on my bike, but most summer days I walked down the hill to the playground. I had tennis lessons, played horseshoes and checkers and was on the softball team. I did crafts. One summer I painted a tray for my mother. I was so proud because I, the artless, had perfectly painted the flowers and even the tendrils. I made gimp lanyards for everybody but gimp bracelets for only a chosen few. One Christmas my mother put gimp in my stocking. It had been many years since my gimp days, but my fingers remembered. I made two lanyards.
I love train rides. All of the ones I love are somewhere else. I rode the auto-bus from Quito to Guayaquil. My friend and I were in the first seats. I think that was first class. Anyway, I had to shut my eyes when the driver ran over a chicken and then a few more animals and finally almost a human. If one blow of the horn didn’t get them off the tracks, they were goners. The part of the trip I loved was the ride itself. We went through the banana growing region. We rode a switchback up a mountain. We saw the Andes capped with snow. We rode until the tracks ended, and we had to take a ferry across to Guayaquil.
The train hardly runs in Ghana now. I am sorry for that. I took the train whenever I could, usually from Accra to Kumasi where the train line ended. I always took a first class carriage. It wasn’t expensive. The day cars had stuffed chairs, four of them, and glass doors you slid to open like they did in old movies. I once took a night train from Kumasi to Tema. I was on my way to our mid-term conference. At the first station, people peered in my window. I put down the blinds. During the night, the train derailed. I was jolted out of bed. We were told to pack up and get off the train. We walked across a trestle bridge where the gaps between trestles was huge. People passed kids across. We waited a while, probably a long while based on experience but I don’t remember, and then a train came. We got on and got off in Tema. That was the end of the excitement.
My favorite rides of all were the subway trains into Boston when I was a kid. We took a bus to Sullivan Square where we boarded the subway. I remember the whoosh of the train as it came into the station. I’d wait right by the door for it to open. My mother sat in the middle of us. I’d turn around to look out the window. I’d stay looking until our stop. We were in Boston. We got off at the Jordan Marsh stop.
I still love trains. I love the sounds and the smells. I remember the jerking to start and stop. If I were rich, I’d have my own train car or even cars. I’d pay to attach my car to train lines. It would be glorious.
Explore posts in the same categories: MusingsTags: July 4th, night trains, Peace Corps Ghana, summer days, trains. Kumasi to Tema
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keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
July 5, 2020 at 3:34 pm
It’s a bit funny because on our lunch break on Thursday I told my work friends that I would like to travel by train 🙂 Didn’t matter to where, it is the ride itself I like so much. I would have bought one of those french rolls wwith cheese and a thin slice of bell pepper. To be honest they don’t taste that good but is a must when travelling by train 🙂 I would also but a cup of coffee, it tastes a bit like tar but it also belongs on a train tavel 🙂
Very windy here today and most of the day has been rainy. None of the dogs have been outside for any longer period of time and neither have I. Now when the day is over the sun shines again. Not for long though, tomorrow will bring lots more of the sky water.
Have a great day!
Christer.
July 5, 2020 at 5:39 pm
Christer,
In Ghana, they sold bushmeat and bread on the train. At stations you could buy fruit and small donuts. I never went hungry on the train. You had to be careful, though, as the bushmeat was so peppered you had to eat it with bread.
I love trains. This country should be ashamed of its lack of trains.
The weather hasn’t changed all day. It is still really ugly.
Have a great day-your first on vacation!
July 5, 2020 at 3:54 pm
Hi Kat,
I love trains. As teenagers, my friend and I would take the train into Boston every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We’d walk around and sight see until 7PM and then head to our favorite coffee house where we listened to local folk singers. At 11:55 PM we’d leave and run like mad to North Station to make the 12:05 back home. The conductor was usually hanging out the door waiting for us. He’d yell and wave his arms for us to hurry. We almost always made it.
A few years ago another friend and I took the Acela to Washington DC. I think we went first class down and came back business class. What a great way to travel. So comfortable and stress free.
Lots of home grown fireworks here last night. They started just before 8PM and continued without letup until after 11PM. My dogs were fine except for a couple of really loud ones that set them barking. Around 3AM somebody thought it would be a great idea to set off a few more. I hope their family members smacked them hard.
It was sunny and warm up here most of the day. Now the clouds are moving in but it’s still comfortably warm. I’ll take it.
July 5, 2020 at 5:45 pm
Hi Caryn,
When I went to Washington, there was no Acela, just a train that made too many stops. I flew back to Boston rather than take the train again. We also used to go into Boston. I remember going to see Cleopatra at what is now The Wang. Back then it was so opulent. The ladies’ room was gorgeous.
I think only Shauna, another boxer of mine, was afraid of fireworks and thunder. None of the others cared. I hugged and hugged poor Shauna. I did hear some dogs barking. I didn’t blame them with all those blasts.
We haven’t had sun today. It is still grim.
July 5, 2020 at 5:58 pm
Hi Kat,
When I was a kid living in Dallas we would travel to New York annually to visit the relatives. In 1956 we decided to travel over the Christmas holidays by train. We took the MKT Missouri, Kansas, Texas line from Dallas to St. Louis. The Pullman car that we were in was then transferred to the Pennsylvania Railroad for the trip into Penn Station in NYC. The trip took two nights and a day. Before the train pulled out of the Highland Park station near our home, I explored the cars from the platform and discovered two dirty, old type cars just behind the locomotive labeled, “Colored”. This was still the days of segregation in Texas. When we boarded the train in St. Louis those two cars had disappeared.
I always loved trains and road the NYC subways by myself from the age of 13. I always loved to stand at the door on the front of the train so I could look out the window and see where we were going. In Brooklyn and Queens one line we rode was an elevated train that went underground when it reached Manhattan.
Trains in this country are a disaster. Amtrack is great if you don’t care if and when you depart or arrive. The freight railroads own the tracks and Amtrack is not a priority. It’s basically good for retired people who want to enjoy the journey and don’t have to be anywhere fast.
A private company is building a high speed train to go from Downtown Dallas to Downtown Houston. I don’t know if I will live long enough to see it come to fruition. I don’t think they have even acquired all the right of way. Today, businesses people who need to travel to Houston take an express luxury bus service. They have WiFi, attractive attendents that serve drinks and snacks. It takes 4 hours each way.
In the early 1970s the high price of airfare between Dallas, Houston and San Antonio was the reason that Southwest Airlines came into existence. Before the deregulation of the airlines in 1979 Southwest operated as an intrastate airline operating under a certificate from the Texas Aeronautics Commission. Today Southwest is the largest domestic airline in the country. Who would of thought that an airline with only three Boeing 737 airplanes and three cities would grow into what it is today. If I had any money to invest in them in 1973 I would be very wealthy today. 😦 Those early employees took stock instead of money and there are retired flight attendants that are very, very wealthy in their retirement.
Thunderstorms this morning helped cool the temperature for awhile but the humidity is still high. It’s a cool 94° with a few scattered thunderstorms around.
Back to the office in the morning and on Tuesday. Hooray! 🙂
Work from home Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Boo! 😦
July 5, 2020 at 11:32 pm
Hi Bob,
What an amazing but complicated trip in transferring cars from one engine to another. I would have been horrified by finding those cars. Like you, that isn’t something I would have ever seen before or ever.
I think I was around 12 or 13 when I could go to Boston with my friends on the bus and then the subway. When I traveled with my mother, the rule was if we got separated we would go to the next station and wait. My friends and I adopted the same rule.
I do wish I was around for the heyday of trains in this country, and I was rich enough to ride them all in turn. It would be like the train car on The Wild, Wild West but updated.
Traveling by plane isn’t as much fun as taking the train. Twice I have taken a sleeper, a cheap one in Finland with six bunks, and first class in Ghana on the derailed train. I’d love to take another long train trip.
It is really humid but cool.