Thursday, June 29, 2017. 6:17 a.m. I get up, don my clothes, collapse the bottom bed (I haven't used the top one on this trip), then check out the dining car. Indeed, they are serving breakfast. I get the tortilla and omelette with salsa--the same item that I was disappointed by on the first lunch, a week and a half ago. The menu's name for this is illusive.
Nevertheless, I return to Roomette #7 in the sleeper. I stare out the window and see that we're in the endless desert flatlands of extreme southern California. We may already be past the California-Arizona state line. The ground is almost denuded of vegetation. Even the cactus and the greasewoods are missing. An interstate highway carries a lot of cars, and a parallel railroad is taking a long freight train in the other direction.
I am hardly the first person to find this environment hypnotic. Painters, writers, musicians, designers, and architects come away from these parched, spooky miles with changed, inspired and reinspired outlooks.
And so it begins for me. From here until Mary Ann collects me (the perfect word for her actions) in New Orleans two days later, I will find my outlook transformed by a mix of puzzlement, isolation, worried concern, and wonder. Hypnotism is a good word for it, but having the right word doesn't explain my strange thoughts.
The usual concerns of other people are here also mine to be addressed. I'm getting older and will soon have to address that matter, especially as regards my health. When I first started writing professionally about eating forty years ago, I was the only person doing so in New Orleans. Now there are hundreds of people in on the act, most of them amateurs working for free. No reason I should quit because of that, but I can't ignore the development either.
I didn't really want to think about such issues during this fun vacation, but to get away from them. But there they are.
When the train works its way through El Paso to that city's beautiful train terminal (amazing, since only six trains a week use it), we are met by the Burrito Lady. She makes burritos filled with chile peppers in all standard colors, cheese, beans and, if you're lucky chicharrones. They cost two dollars each. The challenge is that the train is only in the station briefly, and passengers have to move quickly. I was in line, but the horn honked before I could make my purchase.
The temperature was something like 115 degrees, with no shade over the burrito line. I felt like I was being roasted myself.
Out of El Paso the train runs east through textbook Chihuahuan desert. I never get tired of that mix of lush green here and decidedly desert foliage there. A string of large mountain ranges almost overhang the flat desert. Then the tracks cross US 90, whose Westernmost extremity is about fifty miles west. US 90 is the highway companion of the Sunset Route from here all the way to New Orleans.
The train stays with US 90 until it reaches Alpine, where it performs a crew change and some refreshing of the train's utilities. Then the tracks cross through Paisano Pass in the midst of a rather large mountain range. It emerges from the rocks heading north into a wide valley full of not very much.
It's now that my Fear Alert Light came on. On our way to Los Angeles, the train experienced overheating of its axles and had to slow down for a time. Nothing bad came of this in the long run.
Today, the train decelerates to something like thirty miles per hour, and it stays at that speed for quite awhile. I hear that this is to make room for an oncoming freight train. But I can't forget last week. And I know that this train will travel for at least a hundred miles with almost zero habitation along the way. My overly-worrying mind wonders: what if something happens to the locomotive and we are stuck out here. I have seen very few crossroads. The mapping function of my smart phone sees nothing in any direction. On top of that, it's starting to get dark, and some of the roughest territory in Texas is ahead of us. I keep trying to forget about this--surely a locomotive would be sent out to tow us back in if there were a problem. But what if it derails? Also, if the engine stops running the air conditioning will stop, too. And there is no shelter from the heat here.
Nothing happens, of course. By now I am not quite a basket case, but plenty agitated.
Thank God it's dinner time. I have been tipping well on both trips, and I get a little bit of special service. I sit with a couple with a wide range of interests. He is a church pastor. His wife is along for the ride. Nice people. They are very interested in what I do, but they don't seem to be gourmets. I keep my concerns about the train and other matters to myself.
The dining car's entree for me today is the house special filet mignon, served with a bearnaise sauce from a jar--but that's better than no bearnaise. The steak, for the second time (I tried it on the ride in from New Orleans a week ago), is nicely seasoned and quite good. I get a half-bottle of generic California Cabernet. It all makes me feel better. But. . .
As happened in the opposite direction in the westward half of this trip, the Sunset Limited stops in San Antonio. There it jettisons several cars--a sleeper, a dining car, and a coach. All these will be hitched to the half of this train that came down from Chicago. The remaining cars of the Sunset Limited continue on to New Orleans, but not before a great movement of cars--sometimes my car. I had a mental problem about this on the way west, even though I've been through this routine more about a dozen times before. I keep thinking about the possibility of my going out on the wrong train. I don't sleep as well as usual tonight, and I awaken early.
And that's when the weirdness begins. I know as well as I know anything that this train will follow US 90 all the way to New Orleans. I know exactly where that route will go: through Houston, Lake Charles, Lafayette, New Iberia, and Morgan City, then up and over the Huey P. Long Bridge. We did all the above in reverse at the beginning of this voyage.
We get off to a bad start in Houston. From a very peculiar part of town, the train backs up for several miles at a snail's pace. We go through some very rough neighborhoods. Then, when we work our way into an actual railyard, we must weave in and out of some freights.
I find myself wondering how the train will cross the Calcasieu River at Lake Charles. It looks like the train will ride across the river waters. I didn't get a good look.
We arrive at Lafayette, where upon the train's arrival a young woman is honored for something she did recently. (She arrived on the train.) We heard her speech and that of other notables. We move on through the street-running part of New Iberia, where there might be a full-size moving train in the middle of the street you're on.
Darkness falls. We cross the Atchafalaya River in Morgan City. The bridge looks sturdy enough.
When we get to Schriever, near Thibodeaux, I get it in my mind that there is no railroad track here, but we move on anyway. Of course, there are tracks. I was just imagining their absence.
Midnight. The train is now officially late for the time I asked Mary Ann to pick me up. She has been pleasant and welcoming on the phone so far, but that begins to fade. It's after midnight.
I don't remember crossing the Mississippi on the Huey. But it's dark. I do remember hanging out with a few other passengers, comparing notes, telling jokes, impressing them with my radio show, and wondering if they knew what was going on.
Then the train is moving along on the lake side of the I-10 through downtown New Orleans. I remember that the train made a near-circle around the old Times-Picayune building. This is where a bit of rail called a "wye" allows the train to essentially do a U-turn. It backs into the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal. My big suitcase is on the platform. MA is angry, sitting in the car in front of the station, and being told by the cops to move on. I all but run to catch her. Then I remember leaving a suit jacket in my roomette. I run back to get it. The train is gone.
There's a lot of traffic in downtown New Orleans. It's the Essence Festival. It's hard to get around. MA takes me to the radio station's parking garage. I go up to where I left my car. It's still there. When I take it down, I flash my card and the gate opens. I drive home.
It takes me a day before I feel normal again.
Written by Tom Fitzmorris July 12, 2017 12:37 in
