Journey by Train
by May Sarton
Stretched across counties, countries, the train
Rushes faster than memory through the rain.
The rise of each hill is a musical phrase.
Listen to the rhythm of space, how it lies,
How it rolls, how it reaches, what unwinding relays
Of wood and meadow where the red cows graze
Come back again and again to closed eyes—
That garden, that pink farm, that village steeple,
And here and there the solitary people
Who stand arrested when express trains pass,
That stillness of an orchard in deep grass.
Yet landscapes flow like this toward a place,
A point in time and memory’s own face.
So when the clamor stops, we really climb
Down to the earth, closing the curve of time,
Meeting those we have left, to those we meet
Bringing our whole life that has moved so fast,
And now is gathered up and here at last,
To unroll like a ribbon at their feet.
“Journey by Train” by May Sarton, from Collected Poems. © Norton, 1993.
I have always been fascinated by trains. The railroad tracks divided the city in which I came of age. The more wealthy people lived on one side and my family resided on the other side.
I crossed those tracks on foot walking to College Park High School for years until obtaining a drivers license and crossing those tracks every day taking my sisters to school in a small Volkswagen that had been hit by a drunken Delta Airlines pilot as I attempted crossing Virginia Avenue when taking my sister and a couple of my her friends home one Friday night. It was the first time I had driven at night. I waited until the light turned green. The cops said the pilot had to have been traveling at least eighty mile per hour. Fortunately, the injury was to my pride. My current roommate, the Legendary Georgia Ironman, when driving a dump truck, was hit by a train when attempting to cross those very same tracks south of town decades later. After spending time in a hospital bed he came out of it to play in a Chess tournament. Tim was all bandaged and there was blood dripping on the board as he sat there playing one of the strongest, and the first Georgia child prodigy, Randy Kolvick. The game has become known as the legendary “Blood Dripping Game.” Tim won the game, the only time he defeated Randy. Therefore, Chess has its own version of a “Blood Dripping Game” which is not to be confused with the famous Weiqi version called the “Blood-vomiting game.”
(https://senseis.xmp.net/?BloodVomitingGame)
When young one of our neighbors, who lived next door, had a model train set in his attic and I was the only boy he allowed into his sanctuary. He even allowed me to help paint some of the small models. His wife would bring us sandwiches while we “trained.” Alas, they moved.
In the seventh grade I made a trip to Washington D.C. with my classmates to visit the sites. All I recall now is that Jerri Bickers walked up to me on the train and planted the first kiss from a girl on my lips. That was the first of more than a few kisses received on a train. I don’t know what it is about those tracks…
A stewardess, Cecil Jordan, from the left coast, came to Atlanta to work for Delta Airlines. Because of her I am a proud member of the “Mile High Club.” When she moved to New Orleans I took a train to visit. Decades later I took a job taking brand new Bell South vehicles around the South. None of the other drivers wanted the trip to Lake Charles, Louisiana, which reader readers will not be surprised to learn, reminds me of a song by my all-time favorite R&R band:
That, folks, was a brand new video to these old eyes, so you know today I am a happy camper.
There was a time when a vehicle needed to be transported to Asheville, North Carolina, and it was the week of the Land of the Sky Chess tournament held each year in Asheville, by Wilder Wadford. I drove up in one of those Bell South vehicles being followed by the legendary Rainbow Warrior, Tim Bond, with whom I returned to Atlanta.
One year a very nice young man who was attending Georgia Tech began working at the Boys Club, one of my ALL TIME favorite places on the planet. One day he was reading a model train magazine and after asking to see it he asked, “Do you have a train?” I told him all about the neighbor, and the small train set received from Santa one year. Although I cannot recall exactly when that occurred I can recall it was in the mid to late 1960s and I had not started driving. He was in the ROTC at Georgia Tech, and after graduating, he was sent to Vietnam, where he was killed. I had grown too old to cry, but after learning of his death, I admit to being unable to stop the tears from flowing. What a WASTE! From that moment on I HATED that so-called Vietnam “conflict,” and any and everyone who supported the “conflict” which, I believe, was the “official” name of that “unofficial” WAR. For the Generals to have that war a POTUS had to be assassinated in broad daylight on the streets of Dallas, Texas.
Armchair Warrior 