The Amtrak Diaries

Riding the rails is nothing like flying.  And that’s exactly what I liked about it.

Last weekend, my husband and I drove to Richardson to visit my family.  On Sunday, I decided I wanted to stick around a few more days, so I sent the hubby and the labradeer back to Austin and bought an Amtrak ticket to get me home on Wednesday.

I've been curious about Amtrak for a while.  I was seduced by the romance of the train experience and intrigued by the prospect of reading or writing or sleeping or doing anything during the trip besides driving in traffic on I35.  When I found out how much it cost-- $28 one way-- I was even more interested.  With Southwest flights now at $92 (gone are the days of the $39 get-a-ways) and the cost to fill my gas tank more than $30, it seemed stupid NOT to take the train.  Even when I found out that the trip was over seven hours long, I still wasn't discouraged.  (I was a little CONFUSED... I mean it only takes about four hours by car and trains are supposed to be fast, right?  More on that later.)  But I just considered that time a gift and fantasized about all the writing I would get done, all the books I could read.

So I did it.  All in all, it was a pleasant experience, (and thankfully nothing like my train experience in Peru).  There were set-backs, there were delays, there were unexpected surprises, but DESPITE all that, I still very much enjoyed riding the train.  The best part of the whole thing was the lack of drama.  It was SO AWESOME not to have to deal with the TSA, I don’t even know where to begin.  There were no metal detectors.  There were no plastic bins in which to place your belt and car keys and ziplock baggie of toothpaste and shampoo.  No one badgered me about the sack of food or the bottle of water I carried on board.  I never once had to take off my shoes.  [If you are reading this right now and thinking, "That's not safe!  How do they know people weren't carrying guns?!  You could have had a bomb in your shoe!  I for one APPRECIATE the protection from terrorism that the TSA provides!" then by all means, keep flying.  Keep getting to the airport two hours early in case the security lines are ridiculously long.  Keep stressing out over whether or not Chapstick is considered a liquid.  Keep allowing a rubber-gloved employee to pat down the back of your head because your BOBBY PIN showed up suspiciously in the body scanner.  Have fun with that.] 

I'm not trying to say I will never fly again or that I will cease doing the white-knuckle drive up I35.  I will.  And there are definitely downsides to riding the train, such as the length of the trip and the fact that I can't bring my dog with me.  (It’s a pity, because he would love it.)  All I'm saying is that it was nice to be reminded of what the world was like before we all went crazy and started accusing everyone and their grandmother of being a terrorist. 

Plus, the people I was traveling with were awesome too.  Even when things were not going according to plan, even when situations arose which were less than ideal, I only ever saw ONE person get crosswise about it and complain.  Everyone else was calm, patient, and friendly.  I can't remember the last time I struck up a conversation with a stranger in an airport, and if I'm flying alone and need to use the restroom, I lug my rolling carry-on into the bathroom with me and park it in the tiny stall rather than leave it "unattended", fearful from those constant reminders on the loudspeaker.  But in the Fort Worth train station everyone was sociable.  I had real, personal, friendly conversations with at least seven different people, none of whom had met each other before that day.  I left my bags with someone, twice, while I went to the bathroom.  Instead of hugging our belongings tight and tapping our feet restlessly and avoiding eye contact and stressing over how to board and when to line up, we sprawled out in our seats, eating, journaling, knitting, sharing, trusting that we'd hear the boarding announcement when it was made or help each other out if need be.  It was lovely.

And once we got on the train?  Maybe I shouldn't even mention the comfortable seats and the ample leg room and the handy electrical outlets and the footrest and the fact that I had an empty seat next to me the whole way.  It just seems mean.  But it’s true.  And I was allowed to get up and walk around whenever I chose to do so and no one EVER asked me to put my tray table away.

Oh, and the view was nice too.

And I was able to make phone calls.

And there were five bathrooms just in my car.

 

It's not all tray tables and footrests. 

Like I said, though, there are downsides.  The schedule was not ideal. My ticket said departure time was 11:50AM from Union Station in Dallas and arrival time was 7:30PM in Austin.  That’s already a LONG trip, but I was up for it.  Still it didn’t go exactly as I thought it would.

My Time Table (A.K.A. The Reason Why the Trip Takes Seven Hours, or in My Case, Ten)

10:38AM - Board DART metro rail to go downtown to Union Station in Dallas.

11:15AM - Arrive at Union Station, find out the tracks between Dallas and Fort Worth are under construction so a bus will take me to Fort Worth to get on the train.

11:50AM - Bus leaves for Fort Worth.

12:30PM - Arrive at Fort Worth station to find that the train does not leave until 3:10.  Sit down and make friends for two and a half hours.

2:50PM – Boarding begins (quick process, no security checks, barely even glanced at my ID).

3:15PM - Train starts moving, making only a couple of brief stops at Temple and… somewhere else.  I can't remember.

6:40PM - While passing through Round Rock, an announcement is made that we will arrive in Austin in 35 minutes, earlier than our scheduled arrival time.  (Yea!)

7:05PM – When we are in north Austin, an announcement is made that Amtrak shares the tracks with Union Pacific and due to a Union Pacific freight train delay we will have to stop and wait about 25-30 minutes for a freight to pass.  (Boo.)

8:15PM - After an hour and ten minutes of sitting on the tracks, we start moving again.

8:30PM - Arrive at the Austin station an hour late.

Boarding in Fort Worth, 3:00PM

(Again, everyone was patient about the delays and I for one did not mind them, seeing as how I had good books and no place to be.  However, it was somewhat frustrating to be SO CLOSE to home when the delay occurred.)

Now comes the part when I assault a stranger.

Don't mess with me, old man.

Probably the best part of the trip for me was meeting the other travelers.  Following are some journal entries from my layover in Fort Worth and my first few minutes on the train.

1:10PM –

I am sitting in the Fort Worth train station waiting for my train to Austin.  My company includes a woman who has six kids.  She has homeschooled five of them; one chose to attend public high school.  She is knitting a purple hat.  She tells me that her seventeen-year-old son writes novels.  He likes to swing on a swingset while listening to music to get his ideas. 

There is also a girl in her twenties sitting across from me who is returning to Austin after being in a hospital for a week.  She was doing a clinical drug trial for the disease P.O.T.S. (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) which is a condition that makes the heart beat like it is running a marathon and causes those afflicted to pass out often.  She said the syndrome is not recognized by the FDA, and their only drug to treat it is in danger of being taken off the market.  The girl has only had the disease for two years.  She was attending Texas State in San Marcos, getting her degree in kinesiology when she got sick.  She had to quit school and now lives with her mom in Austin because her condition is debilitating.  She can be fine one day and then bedridden the next.  She’s very sweet.  I worry for her because she's traveling alone, but everyone is being kind to her and one woman is being very motherly, helping with her bags, etc. 

The old man to the left of me with bad teeth is a delivery man, though I didn't hear what he delivers, and he lives in Indiana.  He has a seat cover that he puts in his chair.  He says it has magnets in it and helps with circulation.  He has special shoes with magnets in them too and he says they have really helped his diabetes.  When I mention that they should have a Starbucks in this place because they would make a lot of money, he says, "Do you know what's worse than coffee?" which I thought was a funny response to my desire for coffee.  Then he proceeds to tell me a couple of stories about traveling in Canada.  In one, his bus broke down on the side of the road and he walked for hours in -20 degrees.  In another one, he was with some Russians in a diner and didn't want coffee.  They offered him “postum” which is, according to him, “the worst drink in the world”.  Apparently it was terrible and made him almost vomit on the spot.  (I looked it up on Wikipedia.  It is a roasted grain beverage that was offered as a healthy alternative to coffee.  A 1910 ad shows it being advertised for children.)

1:30PM –

The seat to the right of me keeps filling and emptying again.  It is the seat closest to the door which keeps opening to let in the cold wind.  We (my new friends and I) are unsure if it is the temperature which keeps driving people away, or us.  A man approaches and asks if the seat is taken.  We say no and laugh, which unsettles him.  I tell him, "People don't stay long," and explain that we don't know if it is the cold or us.  He smiles and sits down.  Two minutes later the door opens.  He turns, gets my attention, and says pointedly, "I can tell you... it's NOT you."  :)

1:50PM –

The delivery man next to me says, "Do you know anyone who can interpret dreams?"  I say no, I used to have a book, but... He says, "I've been having the dumbest recurring dream."  So of course I ask what it is.  He says, "I keep dreaming I'm a muffler."  I say, "A muffler?  Like... on a car?"  He nods and says it's the stupidest thing but he has the dream over and over.  I venture, "Well, you do travel a lot.  Maybe..." But he shakes his head, says he's had the dream for years, before the traveling.  I am trying to think of something else to say when he says, "And I keep waking up EXHAUSTED!"  And that's when I punched him right in the shoulder.  Yep, I punched an old man who I had only known for half an hour.  I probably shouldn't have done that, but he seemed to enjoy it.  When he finished laughing, he went on to tell me that in his job people always want to tell jokes, but everyone tells a dirty joke and that's not his thing.  So he started listening to a radio show that ended every program with a joke, a clean one that they could say on the air.  He would listen to the show, hear the joke, then turn off his radio and say it over and over and over to himself and every time he said it, he would tweak it just a little until it was his own.  Then he'd go to make a delivery and the moment he got there, he wouldn't let the other person get a word in edgewise, he'd just launch right into his jokes.  He'd tell them one after another until the job was done and he was gone.  And that's how he figured out how to keep from having to listen to tasteless jokes all day.  I like this guy.  He reminds me of my grandpa. 

2:25PM –

A small child, maybe 4 or 5, is playing patty-cake with her big sister and singing, "That's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I LIKE it, uh-huh, uh-huh" a la KC & the Sunshine Band.

2:35PM –

The train is here, but they are not boarding yet.  There is a man next to me from Bastrop who is taking the train because he can't fly because he had cataract surgery last week.  He said it was amazing and now he can't wait to do the other eye.  He said during the surgery he got to see a great laser light show behind his eyelid.  I asked him if it hurt and he said after a couple of Xanax before hand you don't care about anything.  His wife is a teacher and ever since he retired at age 55, he has been substitute teaching.  (It sounds like he is a good sub because he worked over 100 days in the same school last year.)  He said the very first day of subbing he was in a sixth grade math class and at lunch he called his wife and told her, "They do not pay you enough."

All aboard.

3:19PM – Just got on the train.  Nice comfy seat, tray, handy electrical outlets, unbelievable leg room, footrest, and no one in the seat next to me.  Woo hoo!  We are starting to move.

3:37PM - oooOOOooo!  Just found my SECOND footrest!

3:40PM - Announcement about dinner reservations.  Options are... vegetarian noodle bowl for $16.00 (!!!), half a roasted chicken for $16.75, pork ribs for $19.00, or steak for... (missed the price, but I bet it was more than $19.00).  I think I will stick to my peanut butter sandwiches and apples and goldfish crackers.

3:42PM – The gentle rocking of the train is quite soothing.  I will have to fight being lulled to sleep.

3:43PM - Hmm... very hard to write on moving train.  Signing off.

Arriving in Austin, 8:30PM

[Note:  I never learned the names of any of my travel-buddies and I never gave them mine.  But if one of my train friends is reading this blog, I’m the girl in the red scarf who wasn’t wearing an eye patch.  You know what I mean…  Email me!]

The Nature of Things

Though the title of this blog is The Black Cat Diaries, and there is in fact a rather persnickety black cat named Gink who resides here, there are several other furry creatures that live in our home as well, and one of them is a yellow dog named Uno.

So this is mainly an Uno story.

I have a small, old pillow that I wanted to throw away.  It was a homemade gift from a student a few years ago.  (Don't think me heartless—  This thing has been sat upon and laid upon and who-knows-what upon by teenagers for years.  It is old and dirty and smelly, and its time has come.  However, I did bring it home from school to dispose of because I didn’t want my current students to see me throw away a gift.) 

Instead of tossing it in the trash, I decided to give it to Uno to shred.  Uno’s a year and four months old now and he has gone through his share of toys.  There are a few “tough” ones out there that last a LITTLE longer (these Durable Dragons have been the best we’ve seen) but in general Uno reduces stuffed animals and plush toys to a pile of fluff in less than half an hour.  So I thought it would be a fun ten minutes for him to tear apart this pillow and I was willing to clean up the mess.  It already has a small hole in the side for “easy access”.

Well that backfired because Uno LOVES the pillow.  I gave it to him yesterday and it is still completely whole.  He carried it to his bed and is actually using it as a pillow.  Every time I walk by he hugs it and glares at me, as if to say, “I can’t BELIEVE you wanted me to DESTROY this wonderful thing!”

Sigh.  I guess I’ll be hanging on to the nasty pillow a little longer.

"Thank you for my pillow, Mom."

Hmm, maybe eventually I will learn my lesson.  When you try to “let nature take its course” it doesn’t always work out the way you think it will.  About twelve years ago, I decided to deal with a mouse situation “naturally” by letting Gink take care of it instead of using a trap.  He was young and spry then and, though inexperienced, I thought fully capable of taking care of business.  Another backfire.  That experiment ended with the mouse quite literally running over my ferocious black cat.  Twice.  

Gink was not available for comment.

ADDENDUM:  7/25/12

Uno is not so sentimental after all.  The love for the pillow only lasted three days.

Wait... this belonged to TEENAGERS?!?!

I'm on it!

That was exhausting... But it had to be done.

Science Fair (or The Time My Dad Blew Up the Fifth Grade) – Part 2

My dad, David Kinder,
with his coon skin cap and Bowie knife

Things were different when my dad was a kid.  

When he was in the fifth grade in 1953 in Richardson, Texas, his class once took a field trip, by foot, to a farm a few miles away.  They were pretending to be a wagon train, pulling little red “covered” wagons full of their supplies.   Since they were allowed to dress up as pioneers, the kids carried pitch forks, cap guns, knives, and (some of them) real rifles as they traipsed across town with their teacher.

Things were just different. That’s really all there is to it. 

This is my dad’s story of his fifth grade year, including the time he brought his chemistry set to school and became infamous at the age of eleven.

Enjoy.

When I was about eight years old, I got to wanting a chemistry set (chemical set, as I always used to call them).  I was very interested in mixing things up, and creating my own version of Gruesome Ingredients.  I was also fairly interested in making gunpowder, like Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger would occasionally have to do in my funny books; but I didn’t stress that part to my parents (Tiny and Pappy) when making my request.  Neither Bailey’s Variety, nor Mr. and Mrs. R.L. Johnson’s Richardson Hardware Store carried anything like that, not even at Christmastime.  But you could find a Gilbert Chemistry Set at the big Sears and Roebuck store on Ross Avenue in Dallas, usually around Christmas, and since my birthday is December 6^th, they were available, and I got my heart’s wish for my birthday present that year!

It was the smaller set, that came in a cardboard box of about the size that a Monopoly set comes in, and didn’t have too much apparatus, and only a few brown bottles of chemicals; but that was all right, I was thrilled to have it!  I used it (probably not proper OR correct to say that I “played” with it) a LOT, and in the course of a few months, I had pretty much gone through it.  I tried just about all the experiments laid out in my manual, and used up most all of my chemicals, and quite a bit of household ingredients, such as vinegar, and borax, that were called for but not supplied in my set. 

And I don’t know if Tiny and Pappy knew it, but I tried a few of the recipes and concoctions mentioned in Pappy’s book of chemistry, too…the big thick red-jacketed volume that he kept on his bookshelf, that got into all manner of interesting concoctions.  Gunpowder, for one…

Anyway, after a few months, about all that was left of my first set, was the box, some empty brown glass bottles, and a couple of pieces of equipment that hadn’t burned up, or broken when dropped because they were hot, or mysteriously corroded and crumbled away, even though they had started out as metal.  So for Christmas when I was ten years old, I begged for a new, BIGGER chemical set.  They knew how much I had enjoyed the other one and nothing had (at that point) ever exploded, there had been no serious injuries, and the smell of burnt sulphur DOES go away… eventually…

So under the Christmas tree that year, was a rectangular present that turned out to be the BIG Gilbert Chemistry Set, the advanced one, in the hinged blue case, full of metal tip-out racks of exotic chemicals, and pipettes, and test tubes, and a flask; tubing, black rubber stoppers (some with a hole through them); tweezers, measuring spoons… just EVERYthing!  Except one little brown bottle, that was supposed to contain Nickel, only had a paper note inside, saying that Nickel was not available at that time.  ???  The Korean War was brewing, I don’t know…?  Anyway, I was ecstatic, and right away I plunged into bigger, more elaborate, more complicated, and DARKER experiments and mixtures!  (Several of them were, of necessity, SECRET experiments…)

I learned a lot, with those chemistry sets.  And I was fairly careful, and was almost always alone in my endeavors, so not putting anyone else… usually… at risk.  I did have a few mishaps.  Sometimes things would go boiling up, or foam out of control, when they weren’t really supposed to, and certainly when I wasn’t expecting it.  Several pieces of clothing got ruined, either by staining, or by burning, or by being eaten through by some experiment spilled or gone wrong.  I got burned on the fingers or hand, often.  And I had glass break, right in my hands, when I would substitute ordinary glass jars or bottles for the Pyrex ones that came with the set, but had already been cracked or scorched or broken.  So there were a couple of minor cuts.  Nothing serious.  Mostly, the occasional noxious smell.

We had two fifth grade classes that year, taught by sisters, Miss Rountree and Mrs. Shaw.  They were both large women and fairly attractive, when I see their pictures in my old yearbook.  They were probably about thirty-five and forty years old.  They were both new to Richardson the year I was in fifth grade, and became very popular teachers.  Mrs. Shaw (the older of the two) was a widow, maybe a war widow, I don’t recall for sure.  I was in her class.

Fifth grade was the year that almost all homework, except math and art, had to be done in ink.  Those were fountain pen and ink years, no ball point pens allowed.  It was the year we studied each of the forty-eight states in great detail, drawing elaborate maps of each one.  (Most kids drew all their states about the same size, pretty well taking up the full sheet of paper, regardless of whether it was Rhode Island, or California.  But I insisted on drawing mine all to scale.  Thus, Texas took up about half a sheet of paper, and Colorado was about 2 ½ inches by 3 inches, and Rhode Island and Connecticut were teeny.  Mrs. Shaw told me I could use as much room as I needed, but I wouldn’t do it any other way.)  It was the year that we did art in watercolor, and I fell in love with watercolors, right there.  Priscilla Waters and my buddy Donnie Skiles were the first kids I knew that ‘dated’, and they were a couple.  It was the year I had (serious) pneumonia for the first time.  It was also the year that I had to fight Larry Lester several times at recess, because we had gone from “best friend” status in fourth grade, to “mortal enemies” in fifth, and I never knew why.

We had a spelling bee in class several times that year, and I always won it.  Then one day, there was a “prize” to be awarded to the winner, and we were all excited.  I won the bee, as usual, and the prize turned out to be, that Mrs. Shaw said I could KISS the girl of my choice in our class!!!  WHAT???  What kind of a deal was THAT???  I thought there was supposed to be a PRIZE!?  Looking back, I think it was a set-up job.  Mrs. Shaw knew I always won those spelling bees and she and my mother were pretty good friends.  Anyway, I didn’t know what to do!  There was NO WAY I was going to kiss ANY girl in that class right about then!  Even though I was sweet on one or two of them, in secret, of course. 

I stood there, stunned and speechless, and I could feel my face turn SCARLET red, and I wished I was ANYwhere else.  Mrs. Shaw said, “Come on, David, you won, you have to do it…” and EVERYBODY was hooting and hollering and laughing… I was trapped, so I thought fast.  I got up and walked up to Mrs. Shaw’s desk, took her right hand, and barely kissed the top of it, and then, humiliated, walked back to my desk and sat down amid much laughing and cheering.  Mrs. Shaw just sat there, still holding her hand out, and still smiling, but now SHE was blushing, too, and I think it pretty much backfired on her.  That was the last time she did anything like that to me, or anyone else.  And I finally got over it, about the end of my senior year…

Actually, except for that one instance, I really liked Mrs. Shaw.  We all thought she was nice, and pretty, and we all thought that those two sisters were PROGRESSIVE (wherever we heard that), and they were always coming up with something new. 

Mrs. Shaw frequently encouraged us students in whatever activities we did for fun, and when she found out that I had a chemical set, she insisted that I bring it to school, and do some experiments for the class for what we (at that point) didn’t yet call “show-and-tell”.  I was overjoyed!  My experiments were now OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED!  NOW, maybe I could get something DONE!  Tiny and Pappy asked me several times, if I had permission to take my chemistry set to school, and cautioned me SEVERAL times, to be careful doing whatever I was going to do…

The day after I brought all my gear in, Mrs. Shaw cleared most of the top of her teacher’s desk, and allowed me to set up, and granted about an hour of the class to me.  Normally very shy, and horrified at being in front of the class, I was now TOTALLY unaware of the rest of the students, completely absorbed in what I was doing, and sublimely confident of the future outcome.  Without any of my normal self-consciousness whatsoever, I began my scientific lab work.

I don’t remember what I did, but I conducted two fairly simple experiments, that I had already tried out at home, and got good results, no big surprises (which was often apt to happen to me, as I sometimes “adjusted’ amounts of chemicals, or added extra ingredients on the spur of the moment).  But on these trials, I played it safe.  Mrs. Shaw frequently had to remind me to “say something”, talk to the class, let them know what I was doing.  I was mostly too absorbed, and was completely unaware of my classmates, but gradually I got to where I would briefly describe what I was up to, Mrs. Shaw constantly telling me to “speak up”.

As I said, things went well.  Blue litmus paper magically turned red; clear liquids weremixed in a test tube, and then an invisible cloud of scent, maybe ripe bananas, would drift across the room.  I was “oohed” and “aahed” in awe, especially by some of the girls.

I kept my set there for a few days, and one day Mrs. Shaw frowned and said something like, “Drat, I’m out of ink!”  We all used ink in most of our subjects that year, and we all kept our bottles of ‘washable blue’ in our desks.  She also used red in a separate fountain pen, to grade with, and she had run out.

In an instant, I shot my hand up in the air, and told her I could MAKE her some red ink!  (I had seen this experiment somewhere in my lab book, but I had never tried it.) She was surprised, and pleased, and told me to come on up and get started!  I cleared off an area of her desk, and set up my gas line and Bunsen burner, and pored over my manual, to see what was required.  I had all the chemicals I needed, and I began measuring and mixing away, and adding water, and then boiled my concoction over the Bunsen burner.  I had never tried this, and it was going to go into a fairly expensive fountain pen, belonging to my teacher, but like my son Pat (who had never taken archery before but signed up for the ADVANCED class at UT because “how hard could it be?”) I was supremely confident.

And it turned out!  In about a half hour, I had her a sufficient supply of red ink, to fill her pen and her empty bottle!  And just for the record, it did not dissolve the innards of her pen, nor the paper she marked on, nor her ink bottle, nor her hand!  It was a complete success!  And then she, and everyone else (except maybe Larry Lester, my mortal enemy, and Glenn Williams, the boy who called me the teacher’s pet) was convinced that I was a child prodigy, and an absolute chemistry genius!

At least I was pretty convinced…

So Mrs. Shaw suggested that I plan and conduct one more experiment the next day (a Friday) before I took my laboratory back home.  She said I could pick anything I wanted to, and we would do it the next day.  Then she asked me if I would like an assistant, and asked the class if anyone else had a chemistry set?  And old William Thomas Tawwater’s hand just SHOT up!

William had been one of my friends since we had met in first grade.  He was not as tall as me, but may have been even skinnier, and he had a mop of really red hair.  He had a slim face, and was ALWAYS grinning, and he laughed his evil little “Hee hee hee” frequently.  William Thomas was a good kid, from a big family, but he was always into something, and he had already gained fame, or maybe infamy, from a fourth grade assignment the year before.  Mrs. Churchwell had assigned us to think up the title of a book that we might someday write.  William Thomas’ choice was “Flowing Yellow Rivers, by William T.T.”  =)  I personally thought it was destined to become one of the classics…

William said that he used to have a chemistry set, and I really liked old William, and so we got together at recess and plotted what we would do.

(To be concluded…)

(And yes, I know what you are all waiting for and, trust me, you will get it in part 3.)

Thanks to Dad for sending these pictures of me and my science projects.  

I had completely forgotten about the wooden display board he made for us.  :)

Left is fourth grade and sugar crystals.  Right is fifth grade and toothpaste.

(I do not know why I am holding a hammer.)

And sixth grade was static electricity.  

Hmm... static electricity... that must be why I have all those ribbons stuck to my shirt.