On the road again

I seem to be the only one I know that gets any of this.

Put yourself back in 1955. You are driving along a long straight piece of highway through a pastoral country setting. On your left are cultivated crops growing military-like in their neat rows, alternating with pasture or ground left fallow. On occasion a barn and farmhouse zoom by. On your right is open prairie with more agriculture in the distance, but pacing the highway is a railroad track. It is a main line and you know that because of the poles and wires following tightly along the right of way. They carry electrical impulses not only of communication but of signal indication as well.


Punctuating the track are those line side signals, silver-painted masts with a ladder for maintenance and the black-faced heads. In the center of the head is a hooded light which displays the condition of the track ahead--occupied or clear.


The signals and poles zip by. If only a train would pass to enliven the drive. In those old days you might have longed to see one of the road's passenger fleet. Immaculate stainless-steel sided cars stretching into the distance, let by a streamlined first-generation diesel locomotive. They would glide by almost noiselessly, faster than you could legally go on the highway, with passengers resting in air-conditioned comfort. Which incidentally, few of us had in automobiles. The named trains all carried a lighted sign at the end of the last car proudly proclaiming its identity.

Or maybe a distant haze on the horizon would convert into a pinhole-sized light which seemed to stand still. As you drove toward it the light would begin to be defined by a the blackness of a working steam locomotive, large and menacing, with almost a mile of freight cars in tow. The cars would be from everywhere carrying almost everything. Look-alike unit trains of coal or double-stack container freight were still in the future in the mid-50's.

Sometimes you might catch a meet: two trains passing each other in opposite directions, most often with one waiting on a siding while the other holds the mainline. Sometimes you could catch a glimpse of the signal changing colors as an unseen train approached. If the railroad had semaphore signals, you might get the rare opportunity to see one change positions as you and a train both passed by one.

Trains could sure put life in a trip. Midwestern scenery is fine and watching license plates used to help break up a long trek. Burma-Shave signs were an exciting find. But there was little to compare with the ever-changing life along the rails. Work crews were always out with exotic-looking machines. Sometimes your gas stop was adjacent to a small town's wooden frame depot, complete with a high-wheeled baggage cart on the brick platform and a mail-bag post next to the tracks. And a water tower for the steam engines. Or perhaps as you crossed a major river you would see a magnificent railway bridge, black from soot, dwarfing the trains that used it.

Airplanes get you there faster but they just don't have character like trains did back then. Now, following a rail line is much more sanitized. Steam is gone forever. The communication and signal lines are disappearing leaving mainlines looking bare. Signals are strategically placed to maximize their effectiveness. Passenger trains are a rarity and freights are often land-bridges of impersonal coal and foreign-owned containers.

But you know what? I'd still rather follow the rails. Like I say, I'm the only one that gets it.

Brave Travellers

Adorable Wife recently returned from a trip to a convention of educators, administrators and staff associated with parochial schools. All seemed to go well enough. Eight other souls ventured into the north woods with her on this four-day expedition. All nine Brave Travellers are accounted for, safely returned.

There were traditional gaffes:

Barely an hour en route in the rental van, Adorable Wife had a wardrobe failure similar to those of Janet Jackson, Katherine Heigl and other notables. While in the past I have assumed these episodes were accidental, she is beginning to establish patterned behavior. Not sure I should be concerned at this point but photos taken in early childhood have set her deportment in a straight line for a few weeks at a Tiger Woods-style clinic.

In the quiet hours preceding dawn, Adorable Wife rose to exercise. Not wanting to parade her statuesque self into the hotel's workout room and attract the attention of men many years younger, she tried to manipulate her bedroom television's in-house exercise video to keep her company. Claiming unfair working conditions due to the elaborate and confusing remote control, she not only failed to locate the desired video but activated an in-room presentation of -- she claims -- Avatar. Flustered she called the clerk and explained the situation, not wanting a large debit for in-room movies on her hotel bill. The charge was removed, and we all really want to believe it was Avatar.

A sudden stop on a highway, caused by conditions best not discussed in this forum, sent several items flying in the rental van which conveyed Brave Travellers on their journey. One flying item was a cell phone which deposited itself with remarkable accuracy in a cup of water. Someone suggested that a soaked Blackberry could be returned to usefulness by packing it in rice overnight. The call went to Adorable Wife for some rice, but alas she had packed none. The Brave Travellers were forced to obtain rice at market prices, which Wife handled on their behalf as usual.

She also bought a can of carpet cleaner to launder away a substance (which she would not identify) that was spilled on the cargo floor's carpet as a result of the same sudden stop.

And rice as a cure for a drowning phone is apparently dead-on. Field reports claim full recovery.

Wife is now on a two-glass limit for wine consumed in a six-hour period. Explanations need not be aired here but let the record show that age is not the only cause of failing memory. Her coworkers are supposed to be watching her a little closer since last year's birthday discomposure, but she undoubtedly escaped their scrutiny. The Timber Lodge Incident, as I will call it in years to come, is to be one of those definitive moments in life; a hinge upon which the door of existance swings.

Minnesotans could probably step up their signage for visitors to the next level. Adorable Wife and others walked in the rain for a mile looking for a place to eat lunch during a midday break. They found one but on returning to the convention hall discovered that catering was available right there in the same building, dry as a bone and warm as toast.

Adorable Wife is all about shopping. Trips were arranged to the out sized Mall of America, built on the site of the old Twins' stadium in Bloomington. Historical anecdotes regarding said Twins went unappreciated. Brave Travellers ate, drank and shopped with lust as though that were the true motivation for the adventure(?), with the convention an afterthought. I can prove this with the pile of debit card receipts that she toted home.

Incredibly, Wife kept track of jackets, shoes, reading glasses, room keys and cell phone with remarkable accuracy. On a normal junket Brave Travellers have to set aside a time budget for her to return to her room for many of these lost necessities. If Brave Travellers fail to cooperate, no quarter is brooked and loud public pronouncements will be made. (Regrattably I cannot say with reasonable authority the Timber Lodge Incident is somehow negated as a result of this years' improved tracking of jackets.)

There were other amusing occurances of a less public and blogworthy nature. We are just glad to have Adorable Wife back in the fold, but as soon as she returned Adorable Daughter and family left for an exciting weekend in Omaha. That put us in charge of Fearless Dog. Dog is a great guest and loyal companion but has no tolerance for other creatures--squirrels, dogs, cats, deer, etc., and has sensitive digestion when Adorable Daughter is gone away. The best thing is, though, that he cares nothing for shopping.