Niagara to New York . . . well, Toronto to NYC?

 

February 25, 2025

 

There were wheels

We knew we needed them

To keep us rolling

The chug of the engine

Kept us company

 

Time stood still for a while

When the towns would come by

The whistle warned them

 

There’s a crusty old engine

With cars in its’ wake

We’re coming through

 

 

We don’t mean to cause trouble

We just want you to know

Please don’t stand in our way

 

So we rolled through the mountains

Across the wide prairies

So flat you felt you saw

Across to the other side

 

You watched the wind move

The slight tired prairie grasses

Just those with the courage

To stand through the snow

 

There were lakes all along

As we rolled to the east

It was dead center winter

So they were all white

Covered with snow

 

And their water was frozen

The pike and the trout

Moved slowly below it

Waiting for winter to bid them so long

 

The muskrat, the beaver

Wait for the sun, for the spring

While we roll on by them

 

Now we will remember

The icy cold winter

When we all kept warm

As the wheels kept on rolling

 

We kept on dreaming

Of fields filled with flowers

Mountain green forests

Miles of prairie grasses

Underneath that winter snow

 

I sometimes feel like I’m in a confessional.  I don’t think I’ve always had this tendency to tell  -  and like I say, confess my life, fraught with poor judgement, decisions, or lack of decision.

 

It’s four in the morning.  I find it difficult to believe it is day six.  I guess we’re halfway home as time goes, even though we are not to the halfway mark as miles go.

Not to stereotype people, but most of these people have raised families, and many of them are professionals of one kind or another.  They don’t know the ways of the road.  This is all a fantasy to them while it has been a good portion of my life.

 

I told the story of King Cove -  being fired etc. last night.  I don’t think it probably did much for my reputation.  What do I have to talk about?  No kids, a pretend career?

 

I’m going to take a crack at describing where I am right now.  The place where I am is called a “berth”.  In the daytime it is seats, more like a bench.  This setup is kind of in the corner of the rail cars.  We are on the left side of the car if we are facing forward.  I should say “I” am on the left side of the car.

 

Kristi is in the berth directly across from me on the right side of the car.  There is a thick cloth curtain with snaps on it that pulls across my space.  I snap it closed after I climb the ladder and get in place in my berth. 

 

The berth is about 40” wide (a little more than 3 feet) by 6’ long (maybe 75” but no more than that).  There is a small fan to move air at each end of the berth and there are port hole shaped mirrors at each end as well (about 8” in diameter).

 

There is a berth beneath me.  He actually has a window he can see out of.  Lower berths are more expensive.

 

There are two lights in my berth, one on each end on the wall.  I’m using one just now to see while I write this.

 

This contraption folds up during the day.  There is a steel frame that my bed hangs on.  It is a little under six feet to the floor, not too high but high enough to hurt yourself if you fall off the ladder.

 

There is an aisle between the berths and people walk through to get to the dining car, or the “park”(bar) car.  We have never been game people and I suspect we are somewhat anti-social as a result.  There is a “game” car as well.

 

I think some people enjoy the confinement.  I don’t, but on the other hand these times early in the morning when I can be alone with myself hold some appeal.  Perhaps it is a return to the womb.

 

The train is stopped.  I wonder if we’ll get home on schedule?  There’s no WIFI on this train.  Did I already say that?

Sorry –

 

It’s the last day on this #2 train.  I’m still not sleeping well and I keep drifting off.  We are going through mostly evergreen forest.  There are a lot of lakes and rivers on this part of the journey.  I’ve been getting a lot of background from people, mostly Canadians.  I have talked to Aaron, my bunkmate (he’s in the lower bunk).  I may have mentioned that he is a lawyer from Duluth, MN.

 

I still feel alienated from most of the passengers even though I’ve had conversations, apparently, I’m just not all that interesting.  Maybe no one except Claire.

 

I was looking for animals in the forest, and I see quite a few tracks, but haven’t actually seen any live animals.  I want to write some new songs for us to sing.  I don’t have enough privacy to write on this journey.  Well --  I can write, just can’t make any noise.

 

You wouldn’t know

How down I feel

You couldn’t know how far I could fall

I couldn’t tell you

Couldn’t find the words

Even if I could

I know I’d never be heard

 

I’s a blue, blue being

A blue, blue feeling

In this darkness where I dwell

 

Listening to my thoughts

I thought I’d left behind

Talking to the sky inside my head

Trying to find my way

Not knowing that I’m lost

Why I feel so lone in this room

 

Wandering through the fairgrounds

Watch jugglers balls get tossed

Green, and blue and red

 

Running down a skyway

Of a past I’d left behind

Tripping on a day

And what I thought you’d said

If I can’t be myself

Please tell me

Who else can I be?

Thursday, February 27^th

 

We are not riding on the City of New Orleans.  In fact we are headed from Niagara to NYC, expected to arrive in the nine o’clock hour sometime. 

 

We had a nice time in Toronto.  Kristi and I had hum bao in a Chinese restaurant for lunch (or brunch), and we had dinner in a genuinely Italian restaurant for dinner.  Their menu was in Italian and I didn’t know what I was ordering.  It had dandelion greens, and sausage, but I didn’t quite catch the Italian words.  I turned out to be mac and cheese, which I would never have ordered.  It was OK though and Kristi gave me some of her pizza.  Comfort food.  When we were in Vancouver we went to a ramen restaurant, which I would generally never do, but it was a nice place and David, Kristi and I were impressed with the ambiance of the place.  The ramen was original (or I thought so), and quite tasty.  The Italian restaurant was named Sud Forno, and had good (not great) ambiance but we had walked far enough, and we enjoyed ourselves.

 

When we found the Italian restaurant, we were looking for a South American restaurant that we had found on a directory at Eaton Center, a three story (or near as I could tell) mall with a glass ceiling.  It looked like the restaurant was at the far end of the mall from where the directory was located.  I figured we could walk the length of any mall around so we set off down the mall.  It was a lot longer than I anticipated, and when we got to the end the directory there made it clear that the restaurant was not actually in the mall, but someplace down the street from the end of the mall.

There was construction going on so when we walked out of the mall, we were alongside a long plywood wall concealing the construction area in the street.  We followed that until the end of the construction, and finally we found the restaurant, which was clearly in a state of remodeling, and quite closed.  That’s how we found Sud Forno.  It was about two blocks from the restaurant we had been searching for.

 

We had made a trip to CN tower between brunch and dinner.  We grabbed a cab to get us there.  From 1975 to 2009 it was the tallest structure in the world.  It really gave us a perspective on how large a city Toronto is.  It is BIG!  You couldn’t see beyond the limits of the city from the tower.  There is a nice view of Lake Ontario from the tower, and it looks just like an ocean from there, certainly larger than any lake I’d seen previously.  We bought a few souvenirs in the

gift shop at the base of the tower.  From there we caught a cab back to our hotel.  On the way back to the Pantages Hotel we had a nice talk with our cab driver, a Nigerian immigrant to Ontario.  He said he had a hard time getting to having a living wage for quite a while after he came to Canada, but seemed pretty happy with his life as it now stands.  He said he lives a humble life, cooking for his family, and apparently making more money.  I didn’t ask him if he had other jobs besides driving a cab.

 

As we travel through New York State I can’t help but think of our old friend John Bartles who we met through a compilation album we were both part of.  He had come out to Washington and just showed up on our front porch one day.  Then a year or so later, Kristi and I made a trip east and stayed with him in Buffalo.

 

He had explained that he suffered from schizophrenia, but most of the time he was OK.  He was a prolific, and quite funny songwriter.  He used a variety of musicians on his recordings which were well produced on the whole.  He asked us for a favor  - to sell some books for him  -  and we turned him down.  In his disappointment, we never heard from him again.  I still have the red beret he gave me, although it has become a bit motheaten over the years.

 

Sometimes I struggle with a question of what people think I should be.  I don’t know if everyone has a hard time discerning what is real, and what is not real.  Then there’s the question of who has the most accurate conception of reality  -  as an artist one can express realities that do not exist, realities, that do exist, and realities that are too real to acknowledge, and the most mundane realities.

 

I stop to have a drink

From the sparkling clear water

I dance along the trail

Express the joy that’s in my heart

Here I’ve come to love

My playtime in the mountains

My time away from home

A time to walk out of the dark

 

It’s one foot forward

A climb into the heights

It’s another foot forward

I walk out of the night

To my playtime in the mountains

Clean air, sparkling water fountains

How I’ve come to love this time

This time of playtime in the mountains

 

Winter/summer/get way from work

 

You see the rented, broken remnants

Of a life led in his past