SOMEWHERE DOWN THE LINE

How we travel is as much a part of our journey as the destination.  Sometimes, it can even determine the nature of the future we are heading to.

SOMEWHERE DOWN THE LINE

In 1954, my older brother’s kindergarten class took the train to Junction City.  Two years later, my class traveled by bus to the Marshfield Zoo.  I’ll never know what compelled the kindergarten teacher to amend the field trip itinerary but, for the record, I don’t hold Mrs. Butler responsible for my zoology degree.  Missing that long anticipated train ride is another matter.  I’ve been missing trains ever since.

Trains have been with us a long time.  History tells us that the width between the rails of modern trains dates to the Romans, when the space between the wheel ruts of their chariots measured the same distance.  In grade school, I measured the awesome power of diesel locomotives in squashed pennies.  Once, a friend and I climbed into the caboose of a train that was switching cars in the mill yard.  As the train began to roll again, we hopped  down, ending  my first train ride.  Years later, as a student worker at that same mill, I rode the switch engine and later joked with my dad that I was able to steer the train.

It wasn’t until my son and I booked a weekend trip to Chicago that I finally experienced real train travel.  Rolling through the backsides of towns along the way, my mind flashed to those occasions as a kid when my aunt would visit from Milwaukee.  The family would meet her at the station.  Waiting for the passengers to disembark, I’d imagine the inner depths of the great behemoth before me.   Now, going to Chicago, the foggy mystery of the train’s interior vaporized and yielded to the present practicality of train travel.  The conductor’s refrain, “All aboard!”, holds a deeper meaning.  It applies not just to trains, but to all modes of public transportation, and the earth itself.  Though we value our lives as individuals, we must never forget that, in a larger sense, we all share in the same communal journey.

Trains are part of daily life in Oconomowoc.  The Canadian Pacific runs straight through town, day and night.  With the old station now a restaurant, there’s no need to stop, so the freights thunder through, as if there were no town – except for the whistle.  For a train whistle, the three quarters of a mile to my house is nothing and that song comes with accompaniment.  In the quiet of the night, you feel the train before you hear it.  By the time it makes the heart of town, your whole body has become your ear.  Though it only takes a minute or two from its faint onset to the whisper of its leaving, a train’s passing is like a journey.  In that brief respite from sleep, my mind climbs aboard and I’m gone, somewhere down the line.

After a train has passed, the overriding impression is one of tolerance.    If our nation had not grown up with them, we would never submit to their harsh and irreverent imposition.  Frankly, trains are rude, so it amazes me when an old money resort town, such as ours, looks the other way when a monster roars through its middle.  If we were first attempting to build the railroads today, vainly coupling our independence to their intrusiveness, we might never have had a Casey Jones or a Cannonball Express.

Yet, build railroads we must.  The stress of modern life on the economy and the environment require it.   If we can bend ourselves to the schedules and inconvenience of trains, we might find the humility it takes to get along in this world.   In taking a train, we connect with something larger than ourselves and that may just be the path to a more sustainable future.   I might have missed that train in kindergarten, but my yearning for the experience helped me to climb aboard on the much larger journey of life.