The Great Paper Chase

When an officer reports aboard ship and takes up his duties, one of the first things he does is post his license.  Just as a physician or a dentist or an attorney would display his credentials in his office ashore, so does a Merchant Marine officer aboard ship.  The Master, mates, and radio operator typically display their licenses together in locked frames built into a bulkhead near the bridge and radio room.  The engineers display their licenses in the same way near one of the entrances to the engine room.  Thus, when I joined the oceanographic survey ship Kane as chief mate, I posted my license in its assigned spot.  Anyone who was interested could then look at it and see for himself that I was qualified for my new job.

To the ambitious and career-minded young officer, his license was the single most important piece of paper in the world.  No license meant no job, no career, no future, no money, no home, nothing.  Losing one’s license was a catastrophic professional failure that led inevitably to unemployment, impoverishment, destitution, and desperation.  In short, the license was everything—practically life itself—and every conscientious Merchant Marine officer guarded his license with his life.

When the Kane returned from a survey voyage on Monday, May 19, 1986, she docked in North Charleston, South Carolina, and remained there for the rest of the week.  Several crewmen were scheduled to leave the ship that week, most of them going home on vacation.  The one exception to this was the radio operator—always called “Sparky” aboard ship—who was leaving the company and taking a new job aboard a cruise ship.  To this end, he signed off the Kane and went ashore with all his belongings about noon on Wednesday the 21^st.  He planned to stay overnight in a local motel, and then on Thursday fly to Honolulu where he would join his new ship.

In the course of my work that Wednesday afternoon  I went up to the bridge and chartroom and walked past the spot where the licenses were posted.  Something about this display caught my eye; something about it just didn’t seem right.  Then, to my complete astonishment, I realized that Sparky’s license was still there!  He had gone ashore and left for a new job in Hawaii without his license!!

Horrified by this discovery, my mind raced with a jumble of hurried thoughts.  What would Sparky do in Hawaii without his license?  Could we possibly get it back to him?  Did anyone know what airline he was taking?  Or what motel he was staying at?  Could we possibly intercept him before he left Charleston?   I ran down to the next deck, burst into Captain Weckstrom’s office, and blurted everything out to him.  Like me, he did not know the details of Sparky’s itinerary.  Neither did the purser.  Neither did the chow hall crew, and they usually knew everything that was going on.  Finally, Captain Weckstrom and I agreed on the most likely way to find Sparky and return his license to him.  I would get Frenchy, the bosun, and we would use the ship’s rental car to drive to the airport and there ask what flight Sparky was booked on, what address and phone number the airline had for him, and so on.  It seemed like a good plan, but there was no guarantee that the airline people would tell us anything.

Since Frenchy knew the Charleston area better than I did, he drove.  And he talked. “I can’t believe anyone would do this!  How could he forget his license?  Of all the stuff to leave behind!  What was he thinking?  I ain’t got no license, but I sure know how important it is!  What’s he gonna do on that there cruise ship when he finds he ain’t got no license?  I’ll tell ya this, mate—it sure ain’t gonna be pretty!”

After a short drive and a long soliloquy, Frenchy parked at the airport. We went inside the terminal building and found four ticket counters for four airlines: Delta, Eastern, Piedmont, and one local carrier.  Since no airline flew nonstop from Charleston to Honolulu, I figured that Sparky would need to change aircraft in a major city such as New York or Atlanta.  That made Eastern and Delta the most likely choices.  And so with Sparky’s license firmly in hand, I approached the Eastern ticket counter and addressed the clerk there.

Giving him Sparky’s real name, I asked if he was booked as a passenger bound for Honolulu.  Not surprisingly, the clerk responded with “I’m sorry, sir, but we’re not allowed to give out that information.”

Explaining that Sparky was a Merchant Marine officer on his way to join a ship, I placed his license on the counter so the clerk could see it.  “He’s going to need this when he gets there,” I continued, “or he’ll be out of a job.  I really need to find this fellow and return his license to him.”

Looking quite surprised and taking the matter more seriously now, the clerk responded with, “Well, in that case,” and typed the name into his computer.  He asked where and when Sparky was going and studied the screen for several minutes.  Finally he sighed and said, “I’m sorry, but I have no passenger with this name.  He must be going on another airline.”  I thanked the clerk for his efforts, and then Frenchy and I walked across the concourse to the Delta counter.

I made the same inquiry and received the same initial response from the Delta ticket clerk.  On showing him the license and explaining the urgency of the situation to him, he also took the matter more seriously and started looking for Sparky in his computer.   After a minute or two, he found him.  Sparky was booked on a Delta flight the next morning from Charleston to Atlanta and thence to Honolulu.  The clerk also gave me the name, address, and room number of the motel where Sparky was staying overnight.  I glanced inquisitively at Frenchy. “I know that place, mate,” he said.  “It ain’t far from here.”

I thanked the Delta clerk for his help, and added that he had just saved a man’s entire career, and possibly his life as well.  Then Frenchy and I returned to the car and set out for the motel.  Once again, Frenchy spoke his mind.  “Well, mate,” he began, “it’s a good thing you done the talking in there.  I wouldn’ta been so polite like you were, especially when they first didn’t wanta tell ya nothing!  Now I just hope we find we find Sparky at this here motel.  If he ain’t there, what next?”  I was wondering about this, too, but for the moment just didn’t want to think about it.

Frenchy drove up to the motel and parked in front.  We got out of the car, found Sparky’s room, knocked on the door, and waited with bated breath.  After a minute the door opened and Sparky stood before us.  What a relief!

Sparky greeted us very enthusiastically.  “Hi, mate!  Hi, Frenchy!  Nice of you to stop by!  Are you coming to the party tonight?  A lot of the fellows from the ship will be there.”

I thanked Sparky for the invitation, and then explained that we were not really there on a social call.  Holding his license up for him to see, I told him, “We found that you had left this behind, and we wanted to get it back to you before you flew out tomorrow morning.”

Sparky stared at his license in silence.  The look on his face said it all—disbelief, horror, astonishment.  He looked up at me, then at Frenchy, then back at his license.  He started stammering.  “Oh, my gosh!  Oh, my gosh!  How did this—?  How could I—?  How could this happen?  How did you know?  How did you find me?”

I briefly described how we had tracked him down through the airlines.  Sparky recovered his composure as I spoke and blurted out, “Well, I’m glad you found me!!  Thank you so much!!  Thank you both!!”  He repeated this many, many times and then continued, “Can I buy you a drink?  Can I buy you dinner?  Can I get you anything?  Whatever you want, I’ll get it for you!!  Name your price!!”

Well, Frenchy and I were on the clock, and we needed to return to the Kane.  Besides, we really had not expected to reap any great profits from simply bringing this man’s license back to him.  It was just the right thing to do.  But Sparky insisted so much that we agreed to stay for a sandwich and soda with him.  He put his license away safely in his briefcase, and then we followed him into the motel’s combination snack bar and lounge.  There we found several other crewmen from the ship, and a very pleasant social visit followed.  In his excitement, Sparky dominated the conversation, telling everyone there how we had heroically rescued his license and saved him from a fate worse than death.  I found these remarks a bit extravagant, but if it had been my license, I suppose I would have been just as effusively appreciative myself.  Anyway, after an appropriate interval, Frenchy and I wished everyone well and drove back to the ship.

Aboard the Kane again, I met quietly with Captain Weckstrom in his office.  The news of Sparky’s forgotten license had spread among the crew, and the Captain was asking me how the matter had been resolved.  He listened studiously and nodded thoughtfully as I narrated the story to him.  Finally he said,  “Well, he is a very lucky man.  He is lucky that you noticed his license was still on board, and he is lucky that you and the bosun were able to find him.  Imagine if he had gone all the way to Hawaii only to realize that he’d left his license here.  He would be despairing out there while his license was floating around the Atlantic with us!  Yes, he is a very lucky man indeed.”

As lucky as he was, Sparky may still have found some scriptural injunctions suited to his situation. “Set in order thy house” (D&C 93:44), and “prepare every needful thing” (D&C 88:119), for “if ye are prepared ye shall not fear” (D&C 38:30).  When joining a ship one’s license is most certainly a “needful thing,” one of many such to be packed up and brought along.  Hence the command to “search them diligently, that ye may profit thereby” (Mosiah 1:7).  No doubt Sparky had searched diligently and sincerely believed he had brought everything with him when he signed off the Kane.  With his license missing, though, he clearly had not searched diligently enough.

Many years later, my own license is no longer posted aboard ship.  Instead, it hangs over my desk at home.  I gaze at it from time to time and think about the good old days which it now represents.  No longer is it the most important piece of paper in the world.  Its prominence has been superseded by several other documents.  Among these are my children’s birth certificates, their Eagle Scout awards, their high school diplomas, their college degrees, their marriage records, my grandchildren’s birth certificates, and of course, all their photographs.

Life in the fleet at sea gave me one perspective; life with my fleet of children ashore since has given me a new point of view.  No longer do I focus on acquiring sea time and making it to Master by age thirty; instead I treasure time with my family, time that always passes too quickly.

Sentimental Journey

In the earliest years of my seafaring career, the great city of Philadelphia and its environs loomed large on my itinerary.  I first arrived there as a cadet on the old State of Maine on Friday, June 11, 1976.  She spent three days docked at Penn’s Landing, a recently constructed center city waterfront tourist venue.  I wondered if this was really the site where William Penn had landed in 1682, but I never researched this point.  Next, on Tuesday, May 3, 1977, I traveled on Amtrak and then a local commuter train to Marcus Hook, seventeen miles downstream from Philadelphia, and there I joined the tanker New Jersey Sun as an apprentice.  She sailed for points south on Monday, May 9.  Finally, for three weeks in August of 1978, I sailed around Philadelphia and its suburbs on the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers as a deckhand aboard the oil barge Interstate 50.

In all these travels, my association with the Philadelphia area lay primarily with industrial facilities.  I was on intimate terms with the Sun Oil and BP refineries in Marcus Hook, the Gulf docks at Point Breeze, the Interstate tug and barge headquarters and repair shop at City Dock, the Pennsylvania Railroad coal pier (which also sported oil piping) in South Philly, and the big oil storage facilities across the Delaware in Eagle Point and Delair, New Jersey.  In the little free time that I had, I visited a friend at Villanova University and dined at Sweeney’s in South Philly.  When not underway on the water, I walked and rode trains.  By these methods, I came to know the “guts of the city,” as we called them, quite well.  I loved Philadelphia!

But I saw only a small part of the cleaner and more sublime side of the city.  One of the oldest and most important settlements in the United States, Philadelphia stands out as one of the historical, cultural, educational, and religious capitals of the country.  It is home to famous historical sites dating to the colonial era; major museums, libraries, and learned societies; world renowned colleges and universities; and a denominationally diverse collection of churches, cathedrals, basilicas, and temples.  Three of these structures commanded my attention on a recent return to this city of my vagabond youth.

On Tuesday, May 16, 2017, Miss Patty and I traveled on Amtrak to Philadelphia.  She was on her way to business meetings; I was on vacation.  On arrival at the Pennsylvania Railroad’s magnificent 30^th Street Station, we took a taxi to the Sheraton Hotel on North 17^th Street, our headquarters for the next two days.  From this location, everything I wanted to visit lay within reasonable walking distance.

On Wednesday morning, I set out.  My first important stop was Penn’s Landing, where my initial introduction to Philadelphia had taken place 41 years ago.  The old State of Maine was long gone, of course, her berth now occupied by the sailing ship Gazela.  Otherwise, little had changed.  The Delaware River stretched out placidly before me, and I thought of the many transits I had made of this great river aboard the Interstate 50.  I had passed by Penn’s Landing and passed under the adjacent Benjamin Franklin Bridge numerous times.  As the Interstate 50 plowed along, I painted her decks, fittings, and superstructure, often with the music from the hit film Saturday Night Fever blaring from the radio.  I was a teenager then.  Life was good, and it seemed to stretch out endlessly before me.  Little did I realize just how quickly it would all go by.  For some of us, it would go by much too quickly and be over much too soon.

From Penn’s Landing I walked a half-mile south to my next destination, a building that I’ve wanted to visit for a long time.  This was the Gloria Dei Church, locally known as the Old Swedes’ Church.  A colonial structure dating to 1698, it originally served a Swedish Lutheran congregation.  Today it is Episcopalian.  While this structure’s colonial and denominational history is very interesting, I had come primarily for its maritime significance.  Situated across Delaware Avenue from the Delaware River and the old break-bulk cargo ship piers, Old Swedes’ seemed an appropriate place to honor those “that go down to the sea in ships” (Ps. 107:23).  It was precisely for this purpose that I had come to visit.

Entering through the red-painted front door—red is the ecclesiastical color of welcome—I found that I had this small and cozy church entirely to myself.  Sitting momentarily in the rearmost pew, I looked around to get my bearings and noticed several memorial plaques on the walls.  I had come to see one of these in particular, and there it was.  On the back wall, under the balcony, and on the right-hand side of the church, was the large bronze plaque dedicated to the memory of the cargo ship Poet and her crew.  With a feeling of reverence, I approached it and read the main inscription:

In Memory of The 34 Men of The

U S Flag Merchant Vessel

S. S.  POET

Lost At Sea  October 25, 1980

Approximate Position

38 to 39 N Lat  63 to 66 W Long

The Serenity Prayer followed, and the next panel listed the crewmen’s names, ages, and hometowns.  One of these, Mark S. Henthorne, was a former school acquaintance of mine. I had known him slightly in Maine and aboard the old State of Maine.  He sailed as third assistant engineer aboard the Poet.  He left the girl he had planned to marry behind.  Very sad.

Another officer, Leroy A. Warren, may have known my grandparents.  As a young mate he had sailed aboard the American Export Lines’ passenger ships Constitution and Independence in the 1950s and 1960s.  My grandparents made ten voyages aboard these vessels between 1956 and 1968.  It’s possible that they may have sailed with and met this man on one or more of these voyages.  Aboard the Poet, he sailed as Master.  He left a wife and several children behind.  Also very sad.

I studied the memorial plaque carefully and took several photographs of it.  I noticed the ages of the crewmen and realized that 29 of the 34 were younger when they perished than I am now.  A very disturbing statistic.  I also recalled that I had read the book about the Poet[1] and had written something myself[2] about the loss of this ship and its crew.  Sitting down again in the pew in front of the plaque, I spent several minutes in quiet contemplation.

This time passed quickly.  When I thought that I should leave and continue about the day’s activities, I found that I could not go.  At least, not yet.  An intangible but clearly discernible spiritual presence, for lack of a better description, seized upon my mind and bid me stay a little longer.  At first I dismissed this as imagination.  I had seen what I had come to see and done what I had come to do.  What was left?  But the feeling intensified.  I felt compelled to remain a while longer, and so I did.  More time for quiet meditation, and an opportunity to pray for the repose of these men’s souls and for solace for their families.  The old Roman incantation that I had learned in my youth came to mind:

Requien aeternam dona eis, O Domine,

et lux perpetua luceat eis.

In pace requiescant.  Amen.

In time, the intensity of the feeling that I must stay diminished.  A happier thought, that I was visiting with old friends, took its place.  This seemed strange at first, for I had known only one of these men, and just slightly at that.  But then I remembered Joseph Conrad’s famous lines, and I realized that I shared “the strong bond of the sea”[3] and the “fellowship of the craft”[4] with these seamen.  That explained everything.  With a sense of accomplishment, then, I rose to leave the Old Swedes’ Church.  I felt confident that these seamen were not “lost at sea” but were truly in God’s hands.  He was taking good care of them in “a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their troubles and from all care and sorrow” (Alma 40:12).

After nearly an hour in the Old Swedes’ Church, I returned to the center city area where I ate lunch and did some sightseeing.  This was very interesting, but another more sublime experience awaited me.

In the afternoon, with the Poet and her crew still on my mind, I visited two more churches: the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul of the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia and dating to 1846, and the Philadelphia Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, built in 2015.  Situated across Vine Street from one another, these magnificent and beautiful buildings complemented each other very well architecturally.

I entered the cathedral initially to admire its artistic grandeur.  But then a staff member met me near the front door and explained that while I was welcome to visit, an ordination rehearsal was taking place.  Two young men would be ordained to the priesthood on Saturday, she informed me, and they with several seminarians and older priests were preparing for the ceremony.  Watching them rehearse for this important event was a fascinating experience.  It led me to consider the tremendous personal sacrifices these young fellows would make in order to fully dedicate themselves to doing the Lord’s work for both the living and the dead.  I found this very inspiring and worthy of my utmost respect.

Similar thoughts filled my mind across the way at the Philadelphia Temple.  Men and women with careers and families sacrificed much of their personal time in order to participate in ordinances of salvation for the living and the dead and assist them in their progression into the presence of God.  This, too, I found inspiring and deserving of the greatest respect.

In both of these sacred spaces, I thought of the crew of the Poet and others who have left this life prematurely.  I appreciated deeply the opportunity I had to visit their memorial plaque in the Old Swedes’ Church and to pray for the safety of their souls.  And I hoped that in the Philadelphia Temple the ordinances for their continued spiritual sanctification would be done someday soon.

In the meantime, as John Henry Newman prayed, “in His mercy may He give [them] safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last!”[5]   

Following are some photographs from my visit to Philadelphia:

The sailing ship Gazela moored at Penn's Landing, the site that hosted the State of Maine in June of 1976.  In the background stands the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, linking Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church and churchyard, a half-mile south of Penn's Landing.

 

Three views of the memorial plaque honoring the Poet and her crew inside the Old Swedes' Church.  A very sublime sight.

A pen-and-ink rendering of the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.  From a brochure provided by the cathedral staff.

The Philadelphia Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  From a brochure produced for the temple's dedication.

---

[1] Robert J. Pessek, The Poet Vanishes: An American Voyage, Allston, Massachusetts: 1^st Books Library, 2000; biographical information on Captain Leroy Warren from p. 75-77 & 101-102; information on Mark Henthorne from p. 207-208.  Also, Mark’s surname is misspelled on the plaque.

[2] Included in my essay “The Dead.”

[3] Joseph Conrad, “Youth,” in Tales of Land and Sea, Garden City, NY: Hanover House: 1916, p. 8.

[4] Ibid.

[5] John Henry Cardinal Newman, “Sermon 20: Wisdom and Innocence,” in The Newman Reader, at www.newmanreader.org.

From the Sea to the Hinterland: Outward Bound

For half an hour or so in the late morning of Monday, April 21, 2014, I stood at the Boston harbor front and gazed upon the water.  Dark blue and serene beneath a clear blue sky dominated by brilliant sunlight, the seawater beckoned to me, as it always does.  In a similar moment in my vagabond youth, I would have stepped across a gangway and boarded a ship about to set sail.  Today, however, was to be different.  Instead of going to sea I would undertake a long inland voyage, by railroad. 

At 11:55am, Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited was scheduled to depart from nearby South Station. This train would convey me away from the waterfront and into the Midwest along the route of the old Boston and Albany and New York Central Railroads to Chicago.  There in Union Station I would transfer to the California Zephyr and travel across the Great Plains, through the Rocky Mountains, and across the desert on the route of the old Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy and Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroads to Provo, Utah.  My purpose in making this journey was to attend Miss Karen Elizabeth’s graduation ceremonies at Brigham Young University.  With mixed feelings of reluctance and anticipation, I pried myself away from the salt water in front of me and walked to South Station, ready to board the train.

The Lake Shore Limited departed on time.  Ensconced in a coach seat next to a window on the right side, I enjoyed the view as the train ran the length of Massachusetts and into upstate New York.  The train passed through the crowded Boston suburbs and made its first stop in Framingham as the Boston Marathon was wending its way through town, supervised by an army of police with a fleet of ambulances at the ready.  Following further stops at the magnificently restored station in Worcester and the disappointingly dilapidated station in Springfield, the train entered the Berkshires.  Small farms filled the valleys and gentler slopes amid these mountains and formed a rural landscape vastly different from the eastern end of the Commonwealth.  After Pittsfield, the train descended toward sea level again, and at last emerged from the peaceful wooded hills as it approached the junction in Rensselaer, New York.

Rensselaer was an important stop.  There the Boston section of the Lake Shore Limited would be merged into the larger New York section that was coming up the Hudson from Manhattan.  Operating on a padded schedule, the Boston section arrived first and needed to wait.  Disembarking for the duration along with many other passengers, I looked around the new station, watched trains come and go, and remembered when I had visited the companion cities of Albany and Rensselaer as a teenager.  I had come up here several times aboard the tug Charger as she hauled the gasoline barge Interstate 35 in the summer of 1978.  I had visited the Amtrak station and the state capital, in addition to the petroleum docks and related waterfront landmarks.  So long ago!  It felt good to be back and feel the gentle breeze from the river, even if only briefly.  Presently the New York section of the train arrived.  Its locomotives were removed; the Boston section was backed into place; the two sections were coupled together; and the now enlarged Lake Shore Limited departed on time at 7:05pm.

From Rensselaer the train crossed the Hudson and skirted the north side of Albany.  Within view of the magnificent campus of the state capital buildings, the train passed slowly through a ramshackle neighborhood of abandoned industrial buildings with shattered windows and crumbling masonry.  Soon enough, the train entered the famous main line that crosses the sprawling farmland of upstate New York and accelerated.  Station stops in Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, and Rochester followed as darkness gradually enveloped the landscape.  The stop for Buffalo was made in suburban Depew close to midnight.  A few minutes later, the grand old Buffalo Central Terminal came into view.  An icon of the old New York Central Railroad, it has since become a victim of deferred maintenance and fallen into disuse.  Happily, though, plans for its rehabilitation are in the offing.

Through the dark night the Lake Shore Limited crossed the northwestern corner of Pennsylvania and the northern tier of Ohio.  I slept quite soundly through Erie, Cleveland, and Elyria.  A bit after 5:00am, I awoke in Sandusky, Ohio, and gazed seaward as the train crossed a bridge spanning a narrow section of Sandusky Bay.  Lake Erie lay faintly visible just beyond.  Shore lights penetrating the predawn darkness reflected on the water’s calm surface.  Dozing again, I reawoke in the Toledo station, another large and once-impressive facility that had fallen on hard times.

While sleeping through the night in a coach seat probably sounds uncomfortable, it actually was not.  Unlike airplane seats, the Amtrak seats were wide and spacious with leg rests and ample room to stretch out.  The lighting was subdued, and the other passengers were quiet.  Those who detrained and those who came aboard during the night did so with minimal disturbance.  Overall, it was very peaceful. The train did carry sleeping cars and a dining car, but for this one night I opted for coach and supplied my own food, and it worked out quite well.  Soon after the night receded, the train crossed into Indiana.  An early-morning stop was made in the farming community of Waterloo, followed by stops in Elkhart and South Bend.

Running about an hour late, the Lake Shore Limited reached South Bend around 10:00am.  This was one of the highlights of the journey.  As the train slowed on its approach to the station, the Golden Dome and the chapel spire of the University of Notre Dame came momentarily into view.  The gold of the dome shone brilliantly in the bright sunlight and contrasted beautifully with the blue sky behind it.  For a second an industrial structure along the tracks blocked the view, but then the Golden Dome reappeared briefly for an encore performance before the train passed through a changing landscape and came into the station.

Seeing Notre Dame again was a family history moment.  My older brother—the smart one of the two of us—attended the University of Notre Dame from 1967 to 1971 and graduated with a degree in computer science.  My parents and I made one journey by automobile to Notre Dame in each of those school years.  The first year we delivered him; in the second and third years we attended football games; and finally we watched him graduate.  So long ago, but many happy memories!

West of South Bend the Lake Shore Limited became delayed by heavy freight traffic and track repair work.  As had been the case all along, freight train after freight train went by in both directions, bisecting the seemingly endless cornfields of northern Indiana.  Presently the train entered the cornfields of Illinois.  As the landscape became industrial again the freight traffic increased exponentially.  The train waited for a while at a point a few miles south of Chicago and a few hundred feet west of Lake Michigan.  The bright blue and calm water of the lake looked both inviting and refreshing.  A short distance offshore, a cargo ship was sailing north.  Finally, at 11:10am Central Time, the Lake Shore Limited arrived at Chicago Union Station.

This was another family history moment.  My grandfather, Robert Burns, had made many business journeys to Chicago by rail in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.  Arriving via the old New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroads, he had passed through Union Station and nearby La Salle Street Station frequently.  I had been there once before myself, in 1979, and Miss Patty and the three older children had all passed through Chicago several times in recent years.  Today I felt that I was catching up with the rest of the family!  With nearly three hours between trains, I went outside and walked through the busy city streets.  Tour boats laden with sightseers glided along the narrow Chicago River, dwarfed by skyscrapers on both sides and partially canopied by bridges spaced a block apart.  A cold east wind blew through town from Lake Michigan.  A bright and sunny but chilly spring day in the aptly named Windy City.

Shortly before 2:00pm, it was time to board the California Zephyr.  This train consisted of double-decker coaches and sleepers, as well as a dining car and sightseer-lounge car.  On this leg of the journey, I had a roomette in one of  sleeping cars.  My private little space was located on the right side of the lower level of the last car on the train, one of five such roomettes in a cluster.  Restrooms, showers, luggage storage racks, and a self-service beverage bar were located a few steps away in the vestibule in the center of the car.  It all formed a convenient, comfortable, and quiet neighborhood.  The dining car was two cars ahead, and the lounge car was the next one ahead of the diner.  All together, these facilities were a bit more spacious than my coach seat on the previous train!

Right on time at 2:00 o’clock, the California Zephyr eased southward out of Union Station.  Turning to the southwest, she rolled through the suburbs of Chicago and before very long came into the great American heartland.  All through Illinois and Iowa the train sailed across a sea of farmland.  Occasionally it stopped at small settlements like Princeton and Galesburg and Ottumwa where grain elevators crowded around the stations.  Between stops, it was like being at sea.  Mile after mile after mile of flat farmland extended uninterrupted to the horizon in all directions on both sides of the tracks with the train constantly at the center of the circle.  Numerous freight trains hurried past in the opposite direction on the adjacent track.  The gentle motion of the train resembled that of a ship in a mild sea; it could easily lull one to sleep.  I spent the afternoon reposing in the quiet solitude of my roomette watching a continent go by outside my window with no responsibility except to enjoy the ride and show up on time for dinner.  It was a very pleasant feeling; I could get used to it!  Yet I was not completely alone.  I remained in contact with the rest of the family via text messaging.  James in particular sent me many memos concerning the details of train travel that I would need to know.  At dinner time I walked forward to the dining car where I enjoyed a gourmet meal of strip loin steak and mashed potatoes with cheesecake and strawberries for dessert.  While I was dining the train crossed the Mississippi River.  Back in my own space at bedtime, I was lulled into a sound sleep in my cozy little bed after watching the sun set over a sea of farmland in western Iowa.

Daylight the next morning found me in Colorado.  I had slept all the way across Nebraska.  On awakening, I needed to orient myself to the day of the week.  Traveling by train resembles traveling by ship this way.  When several days are spent en route, the time can become a blur.  It was now Wednesday morning, two days and two nights after I had begun my journey in now far-off New England.  This evening, Wednesday night, I would arrive in Provo.  With this minor matter straightened out, I tended to my morning ablutions and then sat down to an early breakfast of French toast, sausage, and orange juice in the dining car.  Following breakfast, I found a seat in the already crowded sightseer-lounge car and gazed upon gradually sloping farmland and the distant Rocky Mountains as the train approached Denver.

The California Zephyr backed into Denver Union Station at 8:00am, an hour behind schedule.  This was a service stop of about 45 minutes’ duration.  In this interval the passengers could disembark  while a service crew fueled, watered, provisioned, and cleaned the train.  I stepped ashore and looked around the station.  It had been undergoing a major rebuilding and rehabilitation project for about the last two years, and the results were impressive.  Everything was clean and bright with new tracks, new platforms, and a beautifully rejuvenated station building of classical architecture.  The surrounding neighborhood was likewise seeing major improvements.  New office buildings and condominiums were filling downtown, with Union Station serving as the central focal point of the area.  Walking about in the cool morning air with the bright sunshine and clear blue sky felt refreshing and invigorating after a restful night aboard the train.   And so my first impression of Denver, the Mile High City, was a very good one.

From Denver the California Zephyr continued westward and uphill and before very long entered the Rocky Mountains.  Following extensively curvaceous track, the train twisted and turned through valleys and along mountainsides and passed through numerous short tunnels.  I considered myself fortunate to have found a seat in the now very crowded sightseer-lounge car, which with its oversized floor-to-ceiling windows offered the best vantage point for taking in the view.  This was my first time seeing the Rocky Mountains, and the view of them from the train was simply spectacular.  In the late morning, the train reached the summit of the rail line and transited the six-mile-long Moffatt Tunnel through the Continental Divide at an elevation of 9,239 feet above sea level.  From this point it was downhill through the mountains and canyons of western Colorado.

Also at this point I had my first experience with a very mild case of altitude sickness.  I did not really get sick, but just didn’t feel right—lethargic, uncomfortable, queasy, etc.  To alleviate this condition I retired to my roomette and put my feet up, ate some bland crackers to settle my stomach, and skipped lunch.  I also stepped outside at the next few station stops to get some fresh air.  After a little while, and as the train continued into lower altitudes, I felt fine again.  By dinnertime, the train was emerging from the famous Glen Canyon through which it followed the Colorado River, and I sat down to another banquet of steak and potatoes in the dining car.  So much for altitude sickness!

After Glen Canyon the landscape changed to hills and orchards, then to high plains, and then to the famous Ruby Canyon.  By this time the sun hung low in the western sky.  As the California Zephyr passed through the canyon, the now softening sunlight struck its ragged rock walls and illuminated them in magnificent shades of red that defy description.  Ruby Canyon was indeed aptly named.  At its base, the Colorado River again flowed alongside the track.  The river and the railroad parted company after a while, though, and the train entered the desert of southeastern Utah, a sea of empty and uncultivated land that stretched for many miles in all directions to the horizon.  I watched the sun set over the desert, and then dozed off for a while.

By this time the California Zephyr was running about two and a half hours late.  She would arrive in Provo at nearly midnight.  From Provo the train would continue to Salt Lake City and then across Nevada and California to the San Francisco Bay area, but without me.  As I approached the end of my long journey I thought of all that I had seen and experienced since leaving Boston.  What impressed me the most was the enormous food-growing capacity of this country. With the obvious exceptions of the cities and the mountains, from western Massachusetts to western Colorado were farmlands.  In a trek of approximately 2,500 miles,  I reckoned that about 1,700 of those miles contained farmland, whether used for orchards, livestock, or wheat and grain.  A very impressive and thought-provoking sight of “a land which is choice above all other lands.”[1]  Also very impressive was the engineering work of building a railroad with tunnels through the backbone of the Rocky Mountains, truly a monument to American ingenuity and perseverance.  And yet, there was decay in some of the cities, which seemed out of place in a choice land.

Anyway, close to midnight, the California Zephyr came to a halt in the Provo station.  I stepped ashore from this great train for the last time and was greeted on the platform by my beloved little girl, Miss Karen Elizabeth.  She and her friend Magnolia had come to welcome me and drive me to my lodging near the campus of Brigham Young University.  I was very happy to see her again, of course, but also a bit sad to see my train leaving the station without me.  Later on when people would exclaim in surprise, “You rode the train to Utah?!  How long did that take?”  I would answer, “Not long enough!”  And it was true; I could have very happily kept going!

But tonight Miss Karen wanted to know all about my journey.  She had ridden the trains between Boston and Provo several times herself, and we enjoyed comparing notes.  We chatted as I got settled in a spare room in the apartment of Taylor Anderson, her home teacher.

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[1] Ether 2:10.