Still on the Subject of Trains...The Red Caboose

The train has been a constant at the Hollister Ranch ever since the coastline route opened in 1901. The depot at Gaviota was a major loading point for cattle from ranches throughout the area until the 1930s when cattle began to be transported by truck. Today the railroad trestles at Alegria and Agua Caliente canyons are familiar to all on the Ranch, as is the long stretch of tracks between the Rancho Real and the beach. Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner flashes past on a regular basis, and multi-colored freight trains chug along less predictably. Our nocturnal sound track includes not only the yelping of coyotes, the pounding of the surf, and the infamous howling wind -- we also know well the rumble of the train passing in the night and its melancholy whistle in the distance.

One day a couple of years ago, an old faded red Southern Pacific caboose appeared along the railroad track at Sacate. It remained parked there for days, with no apparent function or destination, evoking strange thoughts of hoboes and Woody Guthrie songs. The rain had wreaked havoc that winter and the tracks were in need of clearing and repair. I speculated that the caboose was being used as a temporary headquarters for the railroad workers, but it seemed incongruous and mysterious somehow, and I never saw anyone around. I kept meaning to investigate, and then one day it had disappeared.Yet somehow the little red caboose had cast its spell, and we all found ourselves remembering train rides of days gone by. Mine were mostly subway rides, which probably don't count, but Jeanne Walker, who snapped the above picture of our red caboose, recalled the following:

"When I was a little girl, I traveled by Pullman to Salt Lake city to see my grandmother. A very tall black man dressed in a white jacket with a bow tie brought me my dinner at a table in the dining car. I sat at the table with a starched white linen napkin and silver spoons and ate my trout. We slid past Barstow."

“Later, another dignified black man in a dark suit came to turn the sofas in our room into bunk beds, and then he made the beds with fresh white sheets. In the morning we arrived in Salt Lake City, and yet another black man helped me down the steps to the platform."

“I saw no black people when we stopped in Salt Lake City. My mom said they were not allowed to get off the train there."

"And at the end of the train, as it left the station heading for Denver and St Louis and Chicago, there was a red caboose... ."

Jeanne's story, with its sad recognition of institutionalized racism prevalent even as recently as the 1950s and 60s, reminded me of the poem, "Incident", by Countee Cullen, about another child's long-ago train ride and a disillusioning encounter with hatred:

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.'

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.

Not only do trains evoke yearning and stir up personal memories, I guess they also convey a narrative of our nation's history.

I like the way Bob Dylan put it: It takes a lot to laugh; it takes a train to cry.