(Lonesome Whistle Excerpt)

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I climbed down out of the freightliner on the shoulder of the brand-spanking new business loop, the town itself nowhere in sight behind an onramp. My clothes got dusty and my hands swelled walking the long two-mile loop toward some shade.

Destination: L.A. – a visit to the childhood homestead.

I motivated through town only long enough to score some desert grub at a mom and pop's – nuts, peanut butter, bread and beer – then did the overpass surveillance dawdle. Thankfully Americans love to stare at trains, so you don't stick out if your purpose may be to scope them out for a more direct experience.

Arriving was an immediate L.A. man pulling up at the pumps, snorting, stomping and spitting air all back through its piggybacks (trailers on trains) and open air auto racks. In those days you could get on an empty or loaded auto rack and choose between two or three floor levels, no sweat. Some had side paneling to protect against luckless hunters with auto loan blues, or kids with rocks. Auto rack headroom wasn't all that great and a rack got windy, but the view was always first cabin.

I sidled into the yard around the bulls, jumped up on a paneled rack, took a seat between two bumpers and got small around these big-ticket items. Fueling up fast, the engineer got the bell, got the lever and rolled out of the yard at full parade shout. Up we went onto the mainline, leaving the Rio Grande under the interstate and blasting up the west mesa through deep slices in the sand hills.

Past the Albuquerque cutoff we ran high through the gorgeous vega country of west New Mexico, winding the maypole with the Rio San Jose and Route 66, through Laguna and Acoma Reservations, Cibola Forest, old Fort Wingate, Laguna Pueblo, Zuniland and the radical Malpais lava beds. Through this high meadow country any small rise in elevation put us in the pines; lower down the wind drenched expanses lay naked to the elements.

All around the train spirits seemed to pulse – dead souls habiting the rocks and sky, who had listened before and would listen again, to the wind's rustling in the grass, long after the train had run to the sea. Cirrus clouds whipped ahead west, their icy fingers pointing to the great tomorrow.

At car's end I sat, wind screaming through my hair as the cars bleated and squalled over the rail. Riding along free as a bird on a high summer's day á-la an American railroad was clearly a not-to-be-missed experience, the great divide mountain country holding a mystique all its own. Multicolored billboards presaging Gallup heralded Indian curios, gas stations, cheap motels and restos, Navajoland stretching north and west out of town.

Life was good rolling into the Gallup yards, brakes smoking slow into a crew change "on the run" at five or six mph. The pace picked up after the headend (front engines) change to where we had a good move on here at mid-train passing the crew shack.

For some silly reason I stood up, right out in front of god and creation and assumed the fearless traveler pose along 66 through town. Maybe it was a surfeit of freedom, or perhaps a mild case of daring-do. In any event, only after I'd struck the seasoned hobo stance did I notice the workers seated on a bench outside the shack.

I waved. Nobody waved back.
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