Sometime between 3:30
and 4:00 AM you can you can hear the low but urgent call of the diesel coal
train winding its way from Wyoming through Denver to somewhere south on the
Santa Fe (now Burlington-Northern-Santa Fe) railroad line.
That familiar horn brings
to my mind the first time I thrilled to that same sound. It was the year of the “Chicago Century of
Progress” World’s Fair 1933. The
CB&O ( Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Rail Road) ran west through my
hometown, a suburb of the Windy City and every day that new sound of the diesel
horn warned the passing of the “City of Denver” Zephyr. It was a custom for the kids, unbeknownst to
their elders, to place copper pennies on the track anticipating the arrival of
the premier silver streamliner, and then retrieve the flattened coin as a
souvenir of the great new advance in modern passenger rail service.
Many years and various
national and international conflagrations, marriages and births our family rode
the Zephyr from Denver to Chicago to visit family. That train carried the four of us as well as
all the other passengers on the final run of the CB&O Denver Zephyr. The tracks were the same but the advent of
Amtrak and “The California Zephyr” had arrived and were different. Chicago’s Union Station marked the conclusion
of a long and marvelous historical railroad train trip for us and the
Zephyr.
Another time, another
place and another train trip. Just a
kid, barely 18 years old and almost Christmas in 1943. The “bigger war” had been going on since Pearl
Harbor and ’41. Either wait for the
draft and whatever fate it held or enlist in a military service of your
choice. What could be more glamorous,
adventuresome and heroic than becoming an air cadet in the United States Army
Air Corps? None of the above adjectives
quite fit my personality or abilities, but “Off We GO, Into the Wild Blue
Yonder,” or went.
After necessary
induction processes at Chicago’s Great Lakes/Fort Sheridan installation the
newly hatched cadets were outfitted with all the appropriate clothing
necessities, either on your back or in the ubiquitous barracks bag and off to
the south side of Chicago and the Illinois Central Railroad station. Then my first and only really troop train
adventure. No, not cattle cars, a great
number of coach cars and even some of Mr Pullman’s sleepers, but no porters to
make up your births. A mess hall was in
a converted coach car and you passed through it to receive whatever they
prepared in the way of portable food to be carried back to your respective
car. The I.C. (Illinois Central R.R.)
rolled on and on finally depositing the potential air warriors at a cold, dank,
coal smoke clouded (potbellied space heaters in each barracks were the only
means of heating) Gulfport Field, Mississippi.
The trip continued to
cover needed physical exams and intrusions, shots, and. of course, six weeks
plus of basic training and then as they say, “at the convenience of the
government,” the cadet program was
declared over-subscribed to. The hundred
or so fledgling flyers were assigned to various other Air Corps tasks and
dispatched to their new homes for various “military careers.”
So the story goes of
this train trip--from potential “fly boy” to guard duty in a Military Police
company. The closest thing to flying was
midnight patrol of a deserted flight strip in North Carolina.
A train trip never to
be repeated and hardly ever remembered.
© 25 Aug 2014
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