Riding the Rails: Lafayette to Los Angeles Part 3

Windmill farm in Palm Springs, Calif.

When I woke up, the train was still and quiet. My watch said 5:30. But I didn’t know what time zone we were in and couldn’t remember if I had reset my watch. Looking out the window, I could see the sun coming up in the desert. In the distance was a highway. It looked like an interstate. 

As quietly as I could, I took a change of clothes from my luggage and headed to the dressing room. As I walked through through the coach car, I didn’t see anyone awake. When I got to the dressing room, one of the women in the wedding party on board, was finishing her make up.  She had a huge make up case. Before leaving, she took paper towels and washed down the counter and sink and then wiped them dry. I was so inspired by this that I did the same when I left.

As I left the dressing room, I saw the elderly gentleman from Oceanside, Calif., standing in the hall looking out the window of the door. I asked him if he knew where we were.

“We are about 50 miles east of Yuma, Arizona, and running about five hours late,” he answered, adding, “I won’t get home until about 5 this afternoon.”

On my way to the snack bar to get coffee, I met the conductor and asked him why we were five hours late. He said that during the night there had been a mechanical problem, and they had to wait for a freight to bring a part to fix it. 

In a few minutes, the train started moving...slowly. We passed through red rock formations, and the scenery just became picture postcard gorgeous. As we continued on toYuma, the landscape unfolded into one breathtaking scene after another. I woke my husband up, so he wouldn’t miss any of it. On time, the train would have rolled through all this beauty in the dark.

At Yuma, immigration officials came on board and went from car to car. They stayed on board for quite some time, checking the IDs and luggage of some passengers. They seemed especially interested in two passengers, who had just boarded–a woman and a teenage boy. Both were wearing long black leather coats covered with colorful artwork on the front and back. From the time they had boarded, they had roamed the cars, going from one to another, without ever taking a seat. The officials checked the IDs of these two and searched their luggage. They spoke with them for an extended period of time. The two finally took seats at the back of our car.

Leaving Yuma, the train crossed the Colorado River and headed north into the California desert toward Palm Springs. The train dragged through the desert, stopping continuously for freights. But this desert was very different from the deserts we had traveled through the day before. We passed many citrus groves and saw many other areas of development. This desert was inhabited. It was amazing to see what a little water could do. We passed the Salton Sea on the left, which is actually a salt lake, with no outlets, and the largest lake in California, measuring 35 miles in length and 15 miles in width. Because of the salt content, surface travel on the lake is very fast. We could see campers and RVs near the shore and boaters on the water.

After they returned from breakfast, passengers in the wedding party continued to discuss the five hour delay. Instead of arriving in Los Angeles at 10:10 a.m., the train would be arriving in Palm Springs around that time. When the wedding party reported this delay to family members in LA, they offered to pick them up in Palm Springs. 

Checking out the 112 degrees in Palm Springs.

All morning, the desert scenery had been spectacular and even more so as we neared Palm Springs. We stared in awe at the snow covered  mountains, towering above the desert, where it was 112 degrees, and the windmill farms. When the train stopped at Palm Springs, I went down to the platform. I wanted to see what 112 degrees felt like. It was hot! The Baton Rouge couple was on the platform and asked me to take some photos of them with their camera. I had my camera with me, so they took a photo of me, too.

After the wedding party got off the train in Palm Springs, our car was nearly empty. Freight traffic was still heavy, and we stopped often. But even when moving, the train was going very slow. Even now, I find it so incredible that it took us almost five hours to get to LA. When we did stop, I don’t remember being stopped for long periods of time. We wound our way around Riverside and then Ontario. Along the way, we would pass by more citrus groves and sometimes ranches. We rolled through neighborhoods and behind houses, where I found it very interesting that so many homes had washers and dryers placed outdoors on patios and porches. 

It was of no concern to my family that we were still about five hours late, since we couldn’t check into our hotel until 3 p.m. It was cool and comfortable on the train, and we had access to soft drinks, coffee, snacks  and lunch. It was a very pleasant ride. Coming into Los Angeles on the train from the East gave a view of the broad but irregular plain of the city and the hills rising on each side. The distant skyline looked small in comparison to the vast area of the city.

***

Now that our car had thinned out, the remaining passengers just kind of moved around in the empty seats. The teenage boy who had boarded in Yuma came back and took an empty seat across from a teenage black girl who had been traveling alone. She was seated behind my husband and daughter. This girl was the cool kid on board. She had the cool phone of the summer (2006) and a cool ringtone, which was also used for her wake-up song each morning. Her phone was a pink Razar. (yeah, I know...but it WAS cool in 2006.) And her ringtone was a hit song that year, “I’m Bossy.” Although a quiet girl, she got a lot of attention from the kids. She was one of those people who always looks stylish no matter what they are wearing–stylish in an unfussy and unstudied way. 

The Yuma kid began a conversation with her that could be heard by all the remaining passengers. It was quite evident she had no interest in him, but she was polite. Then he began cussing and dropping F bombs in each sentence. We had traveled more than 2,000 miles without hearing anyone use this kind of language. Our pleasant ride had turned very unpleasant. 

A few minutes later, I heard someone coming up the steps from the lower level. I looked back and there was The Refrigerator Kid. I had thought he was traveling with the wedding party and was surprised to see he was still here. He stood for a moment, surveying the remaining passengers, and then began walking toward the back of the car. When he got to the teenage girl’s seat, he plopped down in an empty seat in front of the Yuma kid. He turned sideways in the seat, leaned his back against the window and set his eyes on the girl. The Yuma kid didn’t say another word –  for the rest of the trip.

Looking directly at the girl, The Refrigerator Kid asked her, “What are you going to do when you get to LA?”

“I’m going to visit some schools I’m interested in,” she answered, adding, “I just graduated from high school.”

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Seventeen. I’ll be 18 next month.”

“I thought you would be older than that,” he said, sounding surprised. “Do you drive?”

“Yeah,”

“Do you have a car?” he wanted to know.

“Yes.”

“What kind?”

“A 1998 Honda Accord.”

“Why didn’t you drive to LA?” he asked.

“My parents didn’t want me to drive on my first trip here,” she told him.

“Well, I’m not going to LA,” he told her. “I’m from LA,” he said, with emphasis on the 'from.' 

“I play football at my high school, and our games our televised. They show our games on TV in LA," he said, with pride.

“Cool,” she said.

When she didn't say anything more, he tried a new approach for her interest. “I might join a gang,” he went on. “Of course, I would have to kill someone if I did.”

“You aren’t going to kill anyone,” she said, firmly, looking him in the eye.

Seeing that he had still failed to impress her, he moved on to another subject. “I think I’m going to get a tattoo when I get home. What kind did you think I should get?”

“I don’t think you should get one,” she said, disapprovingly.

At this point in the conversation, his expression changed, seemingly struck with the realization that in a few minutes this girl would be stepping off the train, and then followed by the resignation that he most likely would never see her again. She would be moving on to her college career, and he would be returning to his parents, his neighborhood, his football team and his school, and all that was a part of that. The day before, he had told some kids on the train that he was an only child and lived with both his parents. The look on his face seemed to say that he didn't want this trip to end..

An apartment complex suddenly caught his attention as the train rolled on closer to downtown LA, and he said, “There’s a ghetto. But it’s not as tough as the one I live in,” he bragged.

He had now turned his attention away from the girl and was our self-appointed tour guide. “They're filming a movie over there,” he said, pointing to a side street. 

Sure enough, there was a heavy utility-type truck with a bucket extended in the middle of the street. Inside the bucket stood a man holding a camera pointed toward a house.

As the train turned toward the downtown buildings, he said, “You’ve heard of the Twin Towers and 9/11? Well, LA has Twin Towers, too. There they are. One of them is a jail, and it has a swimming pool.” (A year or so later when Paris Hilton was arrested and jailed, this information was confirmed in news reports.)

Before we left the train, I wanted to say something to The Refrigerator Kid. I wasn’t sure what to say to him. I just wanted to encourage him in some way. “Stay in school and finish high school.” “Make your grandmother proud of you.” “Stay away from gangs.....” 

Then the train was pulling alongside the platform at LAX. Next to us, I saw a Pacific Surfliner, the train we would be taking to Anaheim. “Maybe we could board this one and not have to wait for another one,” I thought.

Forgetting about talking to the Kid, I grabbed some of our luggage and headed in the direction of the Surfliner. I looked back to see if my kids were following and saw the Refrigerator Kid looking toward my family...with that same wistful look on his face I had seen several times on the train, when he was around kids and their families. I looked backed toward the Surfliner, and it was moving. “Oh well, another one would be along in a few minutes,” I shrugged.

I looked back toward the Sunset, and this time I didn’t see the Refrigerator Kid. “Did you see where he went?” I asked my daughter.

“He went down the steps with his grandmother,” she said. 

“I’m going to see if I can catch up with them,” I told her. “I want to say something to him.” 

I ran down the steps and looked down the tunnels. There was no sign of them. I went back up the steps and told my daughter, “They must have gotten on a tram. They’re already gone.”

About a dozen of the passengers we had traveled with on the Sunset were waiting with us for the next Surfliner. As I stood there, still haunted by the Kid’s face, I wondered, “What would he have thought if I had caught up with them and said whatever I thought to say? What could I have said in a split second that might impact his life for good?” I didn’t know the answer, but I felt compelled to do something. I didn’t even know his name.

But God did. I could pray for him. 

~