This past Wednesday, my charmers and I joined the swarm
hopping the 449/194 Amtrak train out of Syracuse going to Chicago. There we
switched trains and headed to Texas to visit my mom.
Some Amtrak facts: every day, more than 300 trains roar
across the country at speeds up to 150 mph, and, with 21,200 miles of
track, thousands of passengers can go to 46 states and three Canadian
provinces. Train travel is booming again with 30 million riding the rails each
year. (Thank you, Wikipedia.)
We traveled 1,159 miles and covered eight states. A prime
opportunity to see and meet the folks making connections … an eclectic mix of
America on the go. College kids. Single moms. Mentally challenged. Elderly. Alcoholics.
Photographers. Itchy chain-smokers. Actors. Working class heroes. Little-known pulp
writers. But that’s a book or, at the very least, a post for another time.
It’s the American landscape that captured my imagination.
The countryside flickered by in a treasure trove of still-lifes -- countryside once shaped by Norman Rockwell paintings now crumbling into a beauty of deliberate
abandon.
I snapped more than 1000 shots in all, creating a pictorial record of our journey that would otherwise never have been remembered. Along the steel rails, five sights/points of interest appeared more in
my viewfinder than any other:
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| Roll it up and smoke it. |
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| The writing is on the wall. |
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| Crumbling down. |
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| Meaner than a junkyard dog. |
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| Final destination. |
