Thanks Savannah Artist Chuck Hamilton

Love of Rails and Passengers

I love trains. The click-clanging wheels, the rocky ride, the elongated whistle. I think, read and write trains. This winter, in the City Market Place in Savannah, my eyes wandered the courtyard and suddenly focused straight to a painting of a woman standing by a train. This story now hangs in my Florida home. I know this traveler; the long-sleeved jacket and black dress below the knees, the red shoes and hat, and the tan-colored Staminate bag near her feet make me wonder.

Back in the ‘60s, I rode the rails lots, Kankakee to Texarkana to Kankakee. Changed trains in Memphis then crossed the Arkansas delta, empty bottomlands except for few unpainted shotgun houses occupied by sharecroppers.

Oh gosh, I’m not old as dirt, but let me tell you this: once I boarded a train in Memphis that must have come out of an old Roy Rogers movie. Honestly, I went to the club car, perhaps—it looked like a boxcar. Anyway, I drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. Watched a couple men play cards. Another with his pipe near what I’d almost swear was a wood-burning stove.

You know, this woman in the picture—I think she must be me. I think artist Chuck Hamilton was in that same club car, maybe he was drinking coffee, or playing cards, or warming his hands, or watching the cotton roll by—he surely was there, at least in his dreams.