One Chapter

Some stories take time.  Some require you to close your eyes in order to see the scenes passing by.  This is that kind of story.  

We boarded the Southwest Chief in Kansas City at about 10:30 pm on Friday night, two weeks ago.  Sixteen hours and eleven stops between Kansas City’s Union Station and Lamy, New Mexico where we would catch the shuttle up to Santa Fe for a few nights at a B & B in an historic Santa Fe estate.  Ralph and Robert, innkeepers and owners of the Inn of the Turquoise Bear, had showered us with guide books and local lore in the weeks before our arrival.

Since the sun had set an hour or more ago, the walk to Amtrak car 331 traversed an elevated ramp, down a steep flight of steps and came to trackside amid an evening fog mixing its mist with the vapors emanating from under the locomotive.  The scene could have been penned by Agatha Christie to set the foreboding mood for Murder on the Orient Express.  Roomette 12 was up a couple of steps and to the right.  Before we boarded, the seats had been converted and the upper loft lowered into beds.  We met Simon, an affable porter with impish eyes who gave us the official lowdown - then told tales of train trips past. 

Those of us of a certain age have a greater difficulty contorting our bodies so that we can fit into spaces that require a gymnast’s graceful moves to enter.  But we did it - just so we could spend our forty fifth wedding anniversary in bunk beds on a train.  Winnie did the climbing to the upper bunk on the benevolent basis that I was too big and too clumsy to scale the plastic steps and twist, pretzel-like onto the bunk.  Once installed in bed, the gentle rocking on the rails and the haunting, distant sound of the whistle brought sleep quickly and deeply.

Breakfast required uncoiling and dismounting from the sleeping bunks.  I figured out how to lift the upper loft into stowed position and change my bunk into comfy train seats.  After a stop at the lav (some described it as a plastic coffin stood on end with a hole in the bottom) we headed to the dining car.  This required walking.  Our walking looked like a drunken Aflac duck.  The dining room hostess seated us, side by side, to be joined by two sisters from Iowa who were both physical therapists and riding all the way to LA.  I immediately asked if they had any special therapies for people who sleep on trains.  They giggled a bit but demurred.  They didn’t realize I was serious and wanted to ask if they made roomette calls.

After a full breakfast we did the duck walk back to the roomette. I only tumbled into other roomettes a couple of times.  I smiled; they smiled; I got out of their room.  We learned quickly that train riders are a tolerant lot - adaptable, flexible, not impatient nor demanding.

I stopped at the coffee pot just up the stairs from our room.  After filling the cup three quarters full the duck walk resumed down the steps.  As one wing waved to the rhythm of the rails and held hot coffee, the other grabbed every handhold available to keep from falling or spilling.  No problem - didn’t spill a drop.

About six hours to Lamy.  We settled in the seats, read and watched the scenery of western Kansas, Colorado and northern New Mexico.  Ranches that seemed to stretch to the horizon were home grazing cattle.  Sometimes the resting calves were taunted by antelopes who wanted to run.  The old saw about being in remote places is true - there are places where “the deer and the antelope play.”

Nearing towns or cities was often not as uplifting.  Tin roofed hovels with old torn tires as ballast spotted too many trackside settlements.  Many of these homes would not have kept a gentle rain out.  Some might have lost major pieces of roof or siding in a middling breeze.  Many yards were strewn with junk but often there appeared to be organization to the collection of otherwise rejected stuff - these were permanent residents, not transients or the hobos of romantic lore.    

As each new scene flickered by in the window of our roomette the poverty faded to posh new homes or on to the unspoiled prairies and vistas from foothills, then mountains.  The whistle blew and the train slowed toward a gentle stop - the conductor called, “Next stop, Lamy, New Mexico.”  The whistle signaled our arrival at the Lamy station that looked like an adobe mission standing as a sentinel for the town.  We paused to watch the #3 train head on down the line.

The Santa Fe shuttle was waiting.  Only a half hour to the Inn of the Turquoise Bear.  The Inn has a history accompanied by lore and myth.  Its stories are fitting for campfires and train rides that begin like an Agatha Christie novel.  But those stories must wait.  They may be told the next time the cigar box lid is lifted.

--td