Time Travel

After a trip up to the store and then bringing more wood to the porch, I was flipping channels and got caught by Huell Howser's enthusiastic, "That's a-MAZ-ing!"  He was making a tour of the Railroad History Museum in Old Sacramento, which I have never done.  As he was going through the exhibits, I was transported back in time to when I was a kid and my family did a lot of traveling by train, and not just short trips, either.

In Southern California, any trip for us began at Union Station in Los Angeles, a huge, ornate building with a distinctive landmark tower.  Back in the day, it was a bustling place as trains were the primary means of long-distance travel.  The first thing after buying tickets was to find a red-cap porter who would take our luggage to our assigned car.  We always traveled in coach, not in a compartment, which I, as a kid, thought was much more fun.  As much as anything, I remember the smells and sounds of a train station:  conductors calling out, "All abooard!," the hiss and cloud of steam as the engineer prepared to leave, and the heavy chuffing of the wheels that slowly picked up speed.  When I was five, my mother and I went by train from Los Angeles to Chicago, where we visited her family in Peoria.  I don't remember how many days it took.  The car attendants were so very kind.

Mealtimes were tightly regimented and announced by a man with a mini-xylophone going through the cars.  The dining cars were really luxurious, with heavy white linens and beautiful china and silverware, and fresh flowers on the tables.  Even as a child, I was impressed by the food, and could order things we never had at home.

While travelers were at dinner, as if by magic the car attendants would transform seats into single-width bunk beds with privacy drapes.  I was the luckiest because I always got the top berth and could watch the night landscape go by, feel the rocking of the train, and fall asleep to the clickety-clack of the wheels.

We traveled again by train when I was seven all the way to Mexico City and back.  The last time I took to the rails was in the early 1980s, a short hop from San Luis Obispo to Los Angeles.  Boy, times had changed, and not necessarily for the better.  Sigh.

One of these days I'm going to have to go to the Railroad Museum and relive another trip in time...on a train.