The Train to Look For America

Amtrak is a Great Way to See America and to Meet the People That Are Seeing America

The following piece was published on “Old Ones Dream” August 1, 2013, and was included as a piece of “Magnolia Elegy: Place In the Edisto Fork” April 14, 2022.

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The train has proven to be a great way to look for America and to meet the people who are looking.

Photo by Stephen Mease on Unsplash

In June I headed out to the High Plains on a thirty day USA Rail Pass and 29 days later rolled back home after 4238 miles, 4 days, and 6 nights on the rails. The Crescent Limited (New York - New Orleans) took me from Greenville to Charlottesville, The Cardinal (New York - Chicago) took me then to Chicago. The Empire Builder (Chicago - Seattle) took me to my Minot, North Dakota destination. I returned on the same trains.

The Crescent is, in many ways, a train with a metropolitan mindset - a streetwise train. The passengers are for the most part bound for or returning from the metro areas of New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Charlotte, Atlanta and New Orleans and are not so open. The East - West trains I have found to be entirely different in that regard. So in comparison, the Crescent is just something that must be endured in order to get to the good part of the journey.

With me on the Crescent north to Charlottesville was a mid-life Appalachian Trail through-hiker named Ed but I would never have known it had I not struck up a conversation with him during the Charlottesville layover waiting to board the Cardinal. He had caught the train in Gainesville, Georgia after coming off of the AT and he was packed and dressed for the trail. He was bound for Indiana where his mother lived to meet his girlfriend from Colorado before returning home to Colorado for the first time in over a year. He told a story of how he had quit his job in Colorado, took a leave of absence from his girlfriend and hiked off of Mt Katahdin, Maine in the spring of 2012. After hiking 700 miles and losing 32 pounds, his foot got angry and he found himself in the hospital in White Plains, New York with an unresponsive staph infection which “required surgery”. He recuperated over the winter at his mother’s place in Indiana and his girlfriend came to visit him several times. He took up the AT in the Spring, where he left off, and had just completed his goal when I met him. His next goal was to get a new job, hopefully with REI. He left the train in the early morning in Indiana. I’ll bet on his success.

Leaving Charlottesville I shared both a table in the lounge car and my Verizon MiFi with a young culinary school student from Tucson with pueblo blouse, turquoise jewelry, and MacBook Pro. She had brought her lunch on board (forbidden but ignored) and offered to share her avocado salad and Greek sandwich. She detrained all too soon in Staunton. She had flown from Tucson to Charlottesville and was taking the train to Staunton (39 miles) to meet friends.

Some members and several adult leaders of Troop 382 from Lexington, Virginia were taking the train to Philmont Scout Ranch, the Boy Scouts of America national training center in northern New Mexico - what an adventure.

A man that I encountered several times on first the Crescent and then the Cardinal was not responsive to my attempts at small talk at first but in the morning in Indiana I learned that he was a house carpenter by trade but lived now on his family lands in Northeastern North Carolina to which he had retreated from Raleigh in the collapse of 2008. He cuts and mills his own wood, built his house, and makes reproduction fine furniture. He has developed a sustainable existence producing organic food including fruits and berries and he periodically ventures out on a USA Rail Pass and peers out of window to see what’s happening across the country. He says that 2008 was caused by “capitalism out of control” and seems to think that the United States will never recover from that collapse - which, of course, crushed demand for his trade.

The Empire Builder west from Chicago, like all of the the trains west of the Mississippi, has Viewliner lounge cars with the lounge area in a full length glass dome deck with the short order cafe on the lower level. This opens the traveller up to the countryside and makes the search for America much easier, both visually and socially.

Mary and Jimmy from Wisconsin, in their late 50’s and “living in sin” for 11 years were playing cribbage and drinking beer. He is a masonry contractor and they were on their way to Glacier National Park.

Jan, a house painter from Norway (impeccable English), was also traveling on a 30 day USA Rail Pass. He comes to America periodically and takes AmTrak. He says that the building trades are much more healthy in Norway because the oil and gas industry fuels the economy and the government is able to fund the necessary infrastructure maintenance and improvements.

A young man (residential insurance adjuster) and his 3 year old son from Indianapolis were traveling to Seattle to visit the child’s mother and her boyfriend.

I detrained in Minot, North Dakota, and headed south and west around the fringe of the Bakken Play to Shade Ranch south of Medora, North Dakota.

To be continued.