Forty some years ago I used to listen to the early morning country music show on AFN while I got ready for work. I heard a song by Johhny Cash often, it was about a streamlined train coming through a small Texas town and all the folks coming down to the tracks to see it...something like they ain't never seen before. It was a great song. I never knew the name of the song and even many years later when I Googled it, I couldn't find out. Well, after some searching through Johnny's song list one day I came upon a song named "Texas 1947". I tried it and voila! Not only is it the one, there is even a performance of it on youtube and some guy made a homemade video about it using electric trains sets. Well, it is just a happy-maker to find a song after forty years of humming it to myself. It conveys a mood of wonder...of "what it's coming to and how it got this far..." and has always brought back the memories of my experiences on one of the most famous streamlined trains ever...the Santa Fe's Super Chief.
When I was a very little guy, probably about 4 or 5, I took my first ride on the train from Los Angeles to Norfolk VA. The Chief was stationed aboard the Preserver there and our hometown of San Diego was about as far from there as you could get. We kept getting stationed from one side of the country to the other and trains were cheaper than flying in them days. We would ride up to the huge station in LA with Aunt Essie, sometimes Uncle Dude would go along, too. I remember him standing on the platform pretending to cry into his hankie, then going through the motions of wringing it out and cry somemore. The station in LA has been seen in movies and TV shows for decades, every time I see it in one it takes me back to the smells and sounds and sights of the fifties when trains were still the primary mode of moving people around the country. The porters and redcaps were all over the place, luggage carts and venders everywhere, just a bustle of bodies. They had a step they put down on the ground so you could step up into the cars. We couldn't afford a Pullman car with private compartments...or even one of the ones where all you had was a white curtain between you and everyone passing by in the aisle; so we sat in the seats, they would recline a bit, and spend days riding to the east coast. The Super Chief ran to Chicago, through the Sierras, the Rockies, then out on the flat praries. I remember the scenery was spectacular, even for a little guy like me. But the scenery was not enough to keep me from whining about staying in my seat. It was a long ride. The Super Chief bragged about cutting ten hours off the running time of it's older brother, The Chief, but it still took about 40 to 50 straight hours to make the run. Then we got on another train to complete the trip to Virginia. Through the fifties I must have gone back and forth across the country by train at least four times and maybe more. The trips all blur together in my feeble mind. I do remember that at age 8 I embarassed my mom, Betty Lou, when I loudly pointed out that the colored porter had taken a drink out of the same fountain we used. Betty Lou was mortified, but the porter was a kindly man who explained to me that I wasn't in Virginia any more and things were a little different on this end of the line. Formative years in Virginia planted some cultural seeds that took years to overcome. I remember that during one crossing we layed over somewhere in the mid-west, my memory wants to say Minnesota but I am not sure the route went that way. In any case, we got off the train there and it was the coldest I had ever been in my life. My knees were literally knocking together. There was snow on the ground that looked like whipped cream and my insisting that that is what it was brought giggles to our cousins. Those were some pretty cool trips, even if they were boring at times. It is a bit of history that I lived and even today, sitting at a RR crossing or near a track when a train blows by, I am awed by the power and presence trains have...and I remember when me and Betty Lou rode that train together.