Riding the Rails

This is fun! I thought as I began to relax on our train trip. Surprisingly smooth, the ride wasn’t much different from being in an airplane, with the occasional jiggle, of course. And much more freedom and space to move around. As soon as the announcement came on that the snack bar was open, we headed there for a biscuit and sausage, supplementing our scanty hotel breakfast we’d had earlier. A trail of passengers followed us in turn.

It was so cute to observe a family near us. Doting grandparents were obviously treating young ones to their first train ride. The attentive, youngish grandfather stood over them, monitoring snacks and ushering kids down the narrow stairwell back and forth to the restroom. A voice referred to as Mimi pointed out trains to a tot on her lap before we left the station. “He calls them Thomas,” she relayed to her husband. “He said, ‘Where are their faces?’” A young mother kept a professional-looking camera poised to record every reaction of the children in what would surely be a scrapbook full of memories. (My husband and I nudged each other when we heard someone coaxingly say to a subject, “Say, ‘Hi, Thelma.’” Someone had my name!)

The wide, panoramic view out the windows of our elevated car was entrancing as winter fields, hills and valleys spread out before us. Livestock bounded as one across a pasture, calves kicking up their heels, cows frolicking and goats hurrying toward an unseen feeding call. Once I caught a glimpse of animals we had just passed that I could not identify as horses or deer. They were a vivid brown with black faces, shorter than a horse, and one had a strange flap hanging as if from its mouth. Later, the conductor asked if we’d seen the elk! He said one had a rack dangling from its head. So that was it!

“Look, a coyote!” my husband pointed out as I caught sight of a rangy creature darting in and out in scant pasture cover. But the most glorious sight emerged when the intercom announced we were passing through “The Canyon,” the walls of the mountain on one side and the beautiful Washita river on the other. We could imagine a float trip as the wide, shallow river meandered over shoals and frothy rapids for miles outside our window. I could almost hear the clop-clop rhythm of horse's hooves as an Oklahoma cowboy sang a ballad of “riding down the canyon to see the sun go down”.

As we neared our destination, we wondered aloud what a large, stadium-like construction was, finally deciding it might be where the Texas Rangers played. A man from a seat across the aisle and a few seats ahead of us turned and told us it was the Texas Speedway. Another architecturally interesting structure turned out to be American Airline hangars. Our trip was ending, but our memories were just beginning.