I had a conference to attend in Chicago, then a reunion in New Haven, and decided: This is my moment for Amtrak across America. After some days with the family, they plan to make the same three-day trip back to L. Along the route that the Chief takes on its way out of L.
We saw half-completed construction sites, stacks of abandoned lumber and tile, beaten-up boxcars off on side tracks, and piles of refuse. Ramshackle houses and trailer parks dotted the horizon.
Either window you peered out of, it was the other side of the tracks. The biggest town you hit east of L. From the train you see those vast acres of warehouses, whose workers — as well as the truck drivers who drive the containers from the ships to the distribution centers — are among the lowest-paid in the country.
In the Sightseer Lounge that first night, after the last of California had slipped by, I met Clifton, who was on his way to see a girlfriend in Bentonville, Ark. Clifton runs a successful company that circulates petitions for state initiatives around the country, verifying signatures, and if the signer is not a registered voter, well, he can take care of that on the spot.
From the lighted coach you barely see anything out in the dark. But suddenly there will be an outcropping of light — the street lamps delineating a town, or some corporate endeavor all lit up like day, with visible plumes of smoke. A hour working mine site, perhaps? What else could be so industrial at this hour? I had passed through here once before on a road trip and remembered its resort-town feel and its clean air.
