At The Free Press, we firmly believe that everyone, for a few days each year, needs to slow down, switch off, and hit the road—and what better time to do it than the last week of August? So this week, instead of The Front Page, we’re running Journeys, a new series about the trips that change us. Today, Christopher F. Rufo wrote about traveling the West Coast by train. Enjoy! —The Editors
“Pop! Pop! Pop!”
A sunburned man named Jeff jabbed a finger in the air, imitating the gunshots of the Oakland gangster who had once peppered the door of his tow truck with bullets. Years ago, Jeff had worked as a contractor for the Oakland Police Department, where he towed cars from crime scenes in the most dangerous parts of town. I watched my two oldest sons, a teenager and a kindergartner, hang on his every word as the waitress served us lunch.
Characters like Jeff were not uncommon on the Coast Starlight, the train my sons and I took earlier this summer, which runs down the long stretch of territory from downtown Seattle to the Art Deco terminus in Los Angeles. The route passes through all three West Coast capitals and, over the course of 35 hours, one can watch the landscape shift from city to forest to farmland to beach.
At our home station in Seattle, we piled our bags into one of the train’s sleeper cabins—miniature hotel rooms with fold-down tables and metal bunk beds—and felt the Coast Starlight pick up speed. We got our bearings in the café car, made a reservation for dinner, and found three seats in the observation car, which is encased in glass. The passengers chatted freely and the scenes passed through the window: the small towns and stations; the Oregon forest at dusk; the strawberry farms in Watsonville; the coastline after Pismo.
For a number of years, I have taken my kids on trains, ostensibly as a method of travel, but more deeply, as a way of learning a bit about the world. Most families travel by car, where they are all alone, or by air, where they fight through terminals and bristle at any intrusion. But the train is a social affair: Shared spaces and long stretches of boredom breed intimacy, and, as I have learned over the years, all of the passengers are ready to spill their guts.
The rail lines are the archetypal American way of travel. They conquered the continent, and everyone who rides the train carries with them a small residue of that destiny. They are going somewhere, chasing something. Some of these dreams, as we would see on the Coast Starlight, are desperate: scoring methamphetamines, escaping one’s past. Others, firmly middle-class: selling an RV, going to Disneyland, closing a business deal.
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Author: Christopher F. Rufo
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