Show me the way to go home... in These titles mean nothing.

(more train prose - from Monday)

10:08 am.
Waiting to depart St. Paul. Plenty early for a 10:30 departure. I already moved once to find a cleaner window. Now I think first one was better but I can’t hardly go back. Listening to a woman talking moose steaks on her phone. Line of geese crossing overhead. Amish in front of the car. Cranes of the mechanical kind outside the window. Graceful red brick buildings too. Another in the chain of beautiful days. Fall color is holding on.

I could have stayed longer with John - coffee and a muffin were mentioned - but I have this distinct need to be in my seat when I’m on the move. I see water gleaming with sun out the windows on the other side. This though is the left side same as on the way up should be the Mississippi side on the way down. Besides the tall red buildings with the arched windows there is a row of beige brick slanted roofed buildings facing away from the train. There are maroon awnings on the windows on the back. I wonder what the original purpose of them was and I wonder what they are being used for now. A busy street overpass stretches over my train and an expanse of grass where I believe tracks used to be.

It’s now 10:28. Still still. I haven’t heard an annoucement since the first one soon after I boarded. There was a first come first served promise for lunch.

We are moving. Slowly gently. By the maroon awnings. Under the overpass. Red lights.

Damn I know I had a better window. Zen, Mary, Zen.

Waiting for an eastbound freight to clear. Orange engines. Mixed freight, bits of everything. I can see the capitol dome if I crane. I suppose we are being televised on cam one or two - the Division street Wye. How carefully the railroad spells its letters. A Y is a Wye is a Y. Train gone? So we can go? One would think.

It’s 10:47. I walked this morning after the kids got on the bus. Felt really really good. Walking is what I want to do more than anything else. I have to do it. Please whoever is in charge of making me happy, please make me walk.

Ok this is enough for now. I’m going after some salty Salter.

It’s now 11:18 and we are still. We are beside a concrete retaining wall. And have been for quite a while. I just photoed part of an abandoned upholstered chair for M. We have had no explanations.

Salter is good. I know that.

11:44. M’s chair is still in view. The woman across the aisle’s water bottle vibrates on her pull down table. She is curled up on her seat asleep or approximating. I walked to the next car a quarter hour ago. It’‘s the dining car. It has white tablecloths. A man is in front of me blocking the aisle. He expected to be in Milwaukee at three. People wil be waiting for him. They will wait till five, then they go to the concert without him. He’s come from Seattle for the concert. He is upset. I talk around him to the pretty dark haired woman sitting at a table. Her accent is from Hungary ad she says the dining car begins serving lunch at 12. I decide to treat myself to lunch on the train. 494 BAilley Road and Maxwell. We are moving again. Slowly. Still in the city. This does not exactly happen on a plane. More green interstate signs, more formed concrete walls. I’m wishing I’d told Jim to wait till I got to La Crosse before he quit combining to come get me. Briliant sumac. Power lines ahead, like the men who walked through the fields behind our trailer in Palo. Same ones? I wonder. Still barely moving. Three minutes till lunch begins in the dining car. No hurry. No hurry at all.

12:50 and I had lunch. Ceaser salad with chicken and iced tea. $12.50 I left $2.50 tip. With a couple - man retired Navy who likes museums with a wife likes casinos. Also with a young woman who is coming from Minot to visit family in Indiana. She is managing a Taco Bell in Minot. The couple were on their way to Milwaukee - they ride trains a lot - visiting combined grandchildren. He looked a little like my son John.

Jut passed soemthing I wanted to type - water tower said blank blank Indian Community. Gambling money no doubt. Train was booking, now is slowing down. I see a lot of boats and train elevators. I hear a lot of train whistles. Red Wing it must be. The water is finally on the right or left side of the train. While in the dining car we passed a lock and dam on the right or wrong side of the train. Oh well. Now we are going under the elevevators, and now under the bridge.

I suspect my camera battery and my computer battery will both run down at the same time. I took two one minute movies which are real energy eaters. I would like to do another when the river is better viewed. Just passed a bluff of exquisite color. It was close and bright and now it’s in the past.

I’ve dipped into Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime. It is supposed to be erotic and I suppose it is. Our degrees of jadedness vary I guess. It came out in 1967 - the year I had my first baby. That was when life was opening up in many ways. I do really like his masculinity. And his grace. He’s someone I would have liked to know.

There is golden unpicked corn to my left. Flat bottoms of it.

Just through Winona. This must be an express and I”m sure we are picking up some time. I’m not sure what happened to Lake Pepin. Expanse of river here.. now....

(That’s all she wrote.)