The sounds of trains in the distance. Distant yet around the corner, sometimes as if coming towards me. Relaxing, haunting. Metal on metal. At times comforting. At times frightening. The duality of that. Choo choos associated with youth -- I think I can, I think I can.
Later reading how they transported Jews to the death camps. People cramped into the cars with no food or water or toilets, to a place that was, if anything, worse. (Those floating flakes in films about the Holocaust, from the creamatorium or perhaps snow or both and when you read about it there’s the descriptions of sickly sweet smell and then there’s the cruelty of those perfect Aryans and the feces and the....Trains bringing human beings to the work camps. Work will set you free “Arbeit macht frei.” Free. The trains, I had a recurring dream that I was on one of those trains, stricken with horror as we pulled up to Auschwitz.)
There is a pace and rhythm to trains. They fit into hot Summer days and cold rainy nights. They fit into pleasant dreams and horrible nightmares. Pleasant. Horrible. Duality.
Chugga chugga.....
Trains always evocative of childhood. As a teen they somehow accompanied my LSD trips. Psychedelic sounds of trains. Disembodied head floating through the grace of my youth and the clouds and so Neal Cassady hangs out in my tripping, a regular character like the whacky neighbor but sometimes sullen and gray even haunting with his laugh. Floating and wallowing in self-congratulation, dim to the senses like in every great and mad dream in nocturnal, indolent pestering. Ye Gods. The train. Transportation and rewards and a defiance exemplifying the waywardness of the angels who strayed from my evermore. Trains are our friends. This I knew as I tripped. This I will always know.
That sound. Persistent relentless and usually pleasant. But it would reverberate as I came down from the drugs. Reminding me of where my head had gone. Almost literally on a trip.
Watching documentaries about the Great Depression with scenes of hobos and tramps (as they were then called — so much more colorful than homeless or unhoused) riding the rails. Going from one town to the next, staying in Hoovervilles, eating mulligan stew. Panhandling. They are odorless in films, documentaries and books. They are not quite so sad as they must have been in reality. They have each other. And trains.
Trains from old movies. So stylish. The dining car with fine meals. Madcap antics or international intrigue, anything could and did happen on trains in films. Chase scenes, romance. John Barrymore and Carole Lombard creating laughs on a train. Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint being Hitchcockian on a train. Burt Lancaster saving precious art on a train. William Powell and Myrna Loy tippling cocktails on a train.
In college I lived for nine months in an apartment fifty yards from train tracks. But that experience was a square block around round holes and had no lasting impact on my train life.
Trains in Europe are the best. Ubiquitous. Fast. Cheap. Go everywhere. Run frequently. See the countryside. Made love on a train once crossing from France into Italy. Sublime. Train sex better than plane sex.
But I still mostly associate trains with being a child. Odd considering we were nowhere near train tracks. But when the wind was right we could hear them. I could hear the train and its whistle as I played in dirt in my backyard with toy trucks emulating my father who was in construction. I was building great things. Just as later in that same backyard with a bat or a glove or a ball I was leading the Giants to the World Series or with a football propelling Cal to a Rose Bowl victory or I was soldier back in World War II, single handedly wiping out a company of dirty Nazis. For I dwelt long and often in rapturous worlds of fantasy where I created stories in which I was a star, a hero unblemished. When I could hear the train it enhanced the fantasy, no matter what it was.
Chugga chugga.....
I was a bright, shining, wonderful, magnificent and flawless untroubled person in the backyard. I controlled everything in my fantasy worlds, I dictated events. Writer, producer, director, star. Me. Me. Me. And sometimes the train.
Chugga chugga....
Trees. We had a walnut tree, it was home to many squirrels and there was a redwood tree that towered towards the clouds. I would climb the walnut tree to its top or along many of the long branches that went in various directions. I would not, could not fall. Never a consideration, never a fear. I was agile and just strong enough. Alone in my tree. Safe haven. Lonely boy with a fantasy life so rich that I never needed company. Sometimes eschewed it.
My father built a tree fort. Another place for fantasy. Another place I could hear the train from. Sometimes I would stop and listen, other times it was background noise.
When I hear trains today there’s no telling what the sounds will evoke. The Holocaust. Hoboes. The Ale and Quail Club from Palm Beach Story (1942) Sturges. European travel. But usually my youth. One of the sounds of growing up. Trains are part of me in weird, scary, wonderful, nostalgic ways.
Chugga chugga....
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