Sentimental Journeys

I gave my daughter's college roommate a ride to the Amtrak station last night. She would catch the Empire Builder to her home near Minot, North Dakota. The station was packed; the train was on time; she was giddy to get home. She said all her relatives were coming over for Thanksgiving dinner. I told her I used to sprawl out and fake sleeping when we stopped in St. Paul or in St. Cloud so I didn't have to give up the seat next to me. She said she does the same thing. I used to catch the Empire Builder over twenty years ago and remember my own train ride home for Thanksgiving after my first semester away at college. I was such an earnest student. I loved all that learning, all that trust, so different from my small-town high school in the Red River Valley. But I was excited to get back home, too. I had no idea my parents were on the verge of breaking up.

I kept my old journal from some of those train rides, handwritten in pen in a green spiral notebook. Over twenty years ago I wrote:

"A NO SMOKING sign is lit up in the front of the coach. Five cigarettes are burning in scattered areas throughout the coach.

Two little girls crawl out of their makeshift bed, stand on their seats, and peer over the back of them at a young man reading a book. The man, in his mid-twenties or so, has a mustache, thick bowl-cut hair, bulging eyes, a big nose. He's reading the writings of Jim Morrison. Throughout the entire train ride he's been in a world of his own, oblivious to the noisy chattering of all the children, the old men making conversation, and the spurting announcements from the intercom noting travel time, dining hours, and approaching cities. A pack of Marlboros lay on the tray in front of him. Finally he looks up at the girls and smiles.

One thing about horses and trains--they both have a peaceful sway to them.

The dark sky is twinkling. We're just outside St. Paul. We can see early Christmas lights in some of the apartments near the track.

'They sure don't decorate like they used to,' one old guy says.

'Oh, you should've seen how they used to do it in Chicago . . . all kinds of stuff. Hell, there was a Santa Claus Lane, a Rudolph lane. Every house had Christmas decorations. Some say it was the energy crunch that stopped it. But seems like, hell, nobody does it anymore.'

'Yep,' and the listener lit a cigarette, its orange spark glowing in the dark."



I never got lonesome on those rides, me without I-Pod or laptop. I was so glad to leave that valley. And still I've always missed it. Then I wrote a poem--this might have been one of my first ones--right before falling asleep:

Deliver me home
to the land of open sky,

where meadowlarks sing and
the unceasing North wind weasles through
shelterbelts of poplar trees, blowing
the weak-skinned few to lands
of warmer shades.

Deliver me home
to the land of open sky,

where the fertile black soil
brings plush rows of grain
year after year and tough-skinned
farmers live on flat plains spotted with
few white rooftops and gray silos.

Deliver me home
to the land of open sky,

where the biggest event
celebrated each year is
called "Harvest Days," when
progressive farmwives flip
pancakes and modern men
talk of sugar beet yield
and new combines.

Deliver me home
to the land of open sky.

Lead me back, take me to
the heartland I left behind
for fast traffic and skyscraper skies,
cities of power and progress and no time
to think just move, move, move, move.

Deliver me home
to the land of open sky.