Travel journal before smart phones

Dr. William Northcutt is a Staff Reporter for the State Gazette and a former English Professor.

On a train from Newbern to Chicago, you met a Japanese envoi to the United Nations on his way to meet his son. His English was bad, but your Japanese was non-existent. He was also an artist and drew pictures to fill in the language gaps. He drew a picture of his wife, four children still at home, and his father. The drawings showed that the father died from a bacterial infection of the bone marrow. The drawings also showed that the family profited greatly from the old man’s death. They lived in a single family home in Tokyo. He had flown first class to Memphis because he wanted to try BBQ at Tops. He also wanted to take an Amtrack to Chicago. He drew all of that for you. Try drawing “I wanted BBQ.” And he left you with Japanese postage stamps he had designed.

On a train from Nashville to Baltimore years ago, you felt tired and brutal. You were young and selfish. When a kid kicked the back of your seat, you stood up, turned around, angry, ready to spit fire, and looked at the mother. She looked tired and spent. Her clothes and the kid’s said they struggled. You said, “It’s tough for kids on trains. They have all this energy in a tight space.” She almost smiled before her face went blank again.

You took an Amtrack from near Oxford, Ohio once to Chicago. All the way, you sat beside a woman, and neither of you spoke. So many hours of silence. Not a word. She went to the bathroom as you passed through Crawford, Indiana. She sat back down, and all down the tracks, you wondered who she was and what her life was like. She wore a white dress with polka dots. Tiny shoes upon tiny feet, her hair freshly styled, a bow in it like Minnie Mouse, she sat still. No rumpled dress for her. You imagined that she was on her way to a party. Maybe just friends meeting. You imagined them drinking girlie cocktails, looking out for each other, but having a rollicking good time. Or maybe they were going to drink Jameson’s straight from the bottle, passing it around. Maybe they were throwing a bachelorette party. Maybe she was going to a high school reunion. Unless she had a fear of flying, she was on the train, like you, because she couldn’t afford the plane ticket. When you stepped onto the platform, you saw that she was met by a smiling young woman in jeans and a t-shirt who embraced her gently, quietly, for a full half-minute. Her life then walked away with her companions to wherever it was going.

You took a taxi to Penn Station in NYC, and the station’s beaux-arts architecture surprised you because the beauty inside contrasted with the filthy streets. You caught a train from there to Washington, DC, and when you stepped onto the platform, a cousin who worked for the CIA was waiting for you. You knew that your mother had given him your itinerary, but you enjoyed thinking that you were being tracked. At that time in your life, there was nothing in your experience that demanded tracking. Fifteen years later, in Wuppertal, Germany, you saw FBI agents set up in front of your apartment building. They were monitoring with radio equipment, and they were so obviously FBI, and you were the only American in the building. Some weeks later, a friend wrote a curt message: “Sorry about the men in black.” You never knew whether they had come because of your politics or because of the seminars you taught in Marxist dialectics. Or both.

On a 747 from Atlanta to Memphis, you sat with your own family. Your kids were adolescents then. So long ago now. They were excited to be coming home. When you landed, you told them to keep their seats and let everyone go so that you wouldn’t have to push and shove with the rest of them. The kids were patient. On the car ride home, you played the alphabet game, but you lost, and that was good. That was always best with car games. You pulled into the driveway, finally catching up to the you that disappears when you board a plane, train, or bus.