Train Ride to Ogden
A birthday train ride marks the boundary between childhood and adolescence for a young girl.
I was thirteen in 1963 and the times they were a-changin'. The assassination of John F. Kennedy was only a few months away. Social chaos fomented in colleges across the country. A war in a distant land divided America and Russia threatened to either bomb us into oblivion or bury us from within. And by the end of the decade, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon.
Meanwhile, I was headed to Clayton Junior High for seventh grade and Nancy, who had been my best friend through elementary school, would attend eighth grade at Hillside. We lived on opposite sides of 19th East, and that seemed to be the dividing line for a lot of things between us.
We even went to different Mormon wards because of that boundary. Her father was the bishop and her mother was Relief Society president. My parents hated the Church, so they sent me to Sunday School as their proxy. Nancy's mother usually regarded me as if 19th East was a railroad track and I lived on the wrong side.
Nonetheless, the woman allowed me to play with her daughter. The two of us shared everything but Church doctrine, oddly enough. She introduced me to Peter, Paul, and Mary, which led me to a phase of folk singing that lasted for over two decades. Of course, we had our squabbles, including a long, painful non-speaking jealousy-ridden period when she paired off with another girl. Eventually, we got back together until her family moved to San Antonio for mission work. I stayed behind to contend with my religious identity.
For my birthday, Mom wanted to take us on a train trip just for the experience. We would stay overnight in one of Ogden's big hotels, maybe one that was even nicer than the Hotel Utah in Salt Lake, where the president of the Mormon Church lived. I couldn't wait and Nancy was allowed to go, too. What a great birthday gift.
Riding a train! Since seeing my two cousins off on missions at the Salt Lake Train station, the thought of getting on one of those heaving steam-powered machines was the high point of my sheltered life. I had been on a Greyhound bus with Mom, my Aunt Erma and cousin, Paul, to visit cousins in Boise, but this was an excursion just for the fun of it. We wouldn't stay with family. Instead, we would sleep in a hotel. That was a first.
I expected the ride on a train would be totally different from a bus. I rode a bus every week to my piano lessons all the way downtown, so buses held no mystery. Trains! Well, that was epic.
There was a rhythm to a train, a song whose words were clickety-clack clickety-clack rollin' down the railroad track. Heroes and desperados like John Henry, who gave his life building a tunnel, and Jesse James, who made his living robbing trains, fill the folk song catalog. Railroads and trains are so big in American history that a whole genre of music is devoted to them and the forward movement they represent. Trains were always carrying somebody somewhere, from Chattanooga, Tennessee to a Midnight Train to Georgia and even a Peace Train taking us all to unity and love. There's even reference to trains in One Toke Over the Line, Sweet Jesus.
Our voices echoed inside the opulent French Empire depot in Salt Lake City, possibly mingling with ghostly residue of big band musicians and singers of the 30s and 40s who toured America on trains. After we boarded, we chugged through the dusky twilight of evening past backyards and industrial warehouses. We saw the oil refinery northwest of town lit by a thousand bulbs outlining its complex structure, but we didn't have to hold our noses against the smell.
I can't remember whether we were pulled by a diesel or one of the old steam engines. When my cousins set off for their missions, I walked through a cloud of steam released from the engine that would carry them to an airplane bound for Argentina or France. In the 1960s, transportation was going through big technological and social changes. As airplanes gained more speed in crossing the continent, train travel waned as being too slow. More and more, they would move freight and the hoboes whose wanderings became an integral part of the train music genre.
There was also the class distinction at the time between those of us who rode buses and the elite who sipped champaign with their gourmet dinners. United, the only way to fly. Wow, have things changed.
Settling upon drab upholstered seats, a few revealing stains of motion sickness, Nancy and I felt the thrumming motion beneath us as steel wheels churned against the rails. Each time the speed changed, the couplings jolted us forward or backward. The cars rocked gently back and forth almost like a lullaby soothing a fretful baby.
Once through the Ogden Depot and a taxi ride to the hotel, Mom relaxed in the room while Nancy and I pestered the elevator operator to carry us repeatedly up and down. Elevator trips were rare for Salt Lake children. Only our doctors were located in multi-story buildings downtown. Up and down we rode, fascinated as the operator worked levers to stop the car at each floor. Less than a decade would pass before that young lady's job would disappear when automatically controlled systems replaced the manual elevators.
Whenever I watch the movie, The Apartment, Shirley MacLaine's character reminds me of that woman struggling to match the car to the floor's threshold so guests wouldn't trip. Sometimes the difference was as much as six inches. Then she would go up and down until she hit it just right. Either the controls had a lot of play in them or she was new at the job. As I think of it now, MacLaine's character had an aggravating up and down relationship with her love interest. Anyway, we gave that poor lady a lot of practice with our explorations. We were easily entertained and she soon told us to "get lost."
As adventures go, it was a simple trip, one that I hadn't remembered until I recently learned to play Chattanooga Choo-Choo on the piano. That simple arrangement caused the memory to pop up with all a train's technological details. The rhythmic power of the wheels, the heaving roar of the engine, the steam wheezing out of the boiler marking the end of the journey; that train chugging along while the young passenger dreams of his beloved waiting in Tennessee. The end of the line. Dreams were brought to fruition on trains. Lovers united. Small rural towns linked together. A nation built and an environment altered. To this day, old rail beds still mark the landscape.
That energetic national expansion was entering its sunset, though. Perhaps Mom wanted me to experience the train before it died completely. Undoubtedly trains were part of her own youthful travels. She may have wanted one last ride just to remember a particular trip that changed her view outside the confines of the Mormon Church. She never spoke of such things, but changes were happening. The world outside her comfort zone frightened her with its Cold War threats. Racial strife challenged her place in society, and blatant rock and roll music thrusted blatant sex where Frank and Dean once obscured their lust with romantic serenades. Come fly with me … and don't tell your mama!
The Sixties was a yeasty decade. It was also a pivotal time for me as an adolescent in a town that tried desperately to hold any changes at bay. The Church fought hard against secular incursion, but over time succumbed to incoming wealth and incessant growth.
On a personal level, there were changes I was going through. Somewhere during those up and downs on the elevator and the excitement of the train ride itself, I started my first menstrual period. Mom, of course, rescued the day with a trip to the drugstore. And Nancy was in on that passage with me. It would be our final shared secret.
Days later, school started. Nancy disappeared into her new school with other friends, rarely to be seen again. Any hard feelings were softened in the flurry of my own school, bringing lots of new friends that came from different social and religious backgrounds. I think I was one of two Mormon girls in our little group. A Jewish girl, an agnostic science geek who later scandalized us by identifying as a Nazi, a Job's Daughter, and the daughter of the City Cemetery sexton made up the rest of the crew. She was a more outgoing, adventurous girl who was very much into boys. Oh yes, new adventures awaited me. And Mom and I faced added struggles with personal philosophies.
As that train furnished a fun weekend excursion, it also marked the threshold of changes that would lead me toward my present life. Indeed, it was a great birthday gift for a young girl enclosed in a theocratic world. I wonder now if Mom knew how much it would initiate me into a wider and more troubling period of growth?
Forgive me, dear readers. While posting this essay, I missed assigning the comments to “everyone” instead of “paid only.” I don’t want to leave anyone out just because of a senior moment and a lack of caffeine. Comment away, folks!
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Only did one train trip, in the 50's, though I'm in the same age range of 75. Instead my parents loved traveling and camping and i had been through all the lower 48 states by the time i got out of high school. This gave me a broader view of the world. Then to Alaska and Hawaii. Then Mexico, now 11 times. Then the US Virgin Islands,then Europe, then Scandinavian countries. Then back to traveling around the USA.
I knew were close in age, but not this close. I, too, was 13 in 1963. All year, as my birthday is Jan. 1.
This was a lovely piece, so well-paced. Like all good writers, you know what to say and what to leave unsaid. I'm fascinated with your relationship with LDS. I'd been wondering.