Favorite Chapter of Alice's Adventures

Through the looking Glass Insects

You may recall this is the chapter about Which involves Bread and Butter flys and pollinating elephants as well as a passenger train which Alice has no ticket for. Well, I have always had a thing with trains: When I was about eight years old, living in the south suburbs of Cook county, I remember crossing the street through about a city block of dense forest, past Coy's Auto Repair Shop heading to the "tracks". It seemed that there were always these train cars sitting there. Well, under the thirteenth car was a load of iron oar, the perfect size for me to shoot with my "wrist rocket". I had many of these slingshots over the years and can even remember making one from the trees in said forest and a solid rubber band. I remember being afraid to climb under the train cars even though there was nothing to be afraid of, as these cars seemed to be forgotten. I remember climbing on them with the older boys in the neighbor hood and feeling like a rebel and I liked that. I used to shoot these perfectly round man-made iron spheres at the trains when they would go by and remember all the graffiti above my reach. 

Being about 30 miles from Chicago, the train was one of the best ways to get to the city. As a kid I traveled by the Metra train to and from Chicago White Sox Games and as I got older to and from Venetian Night and the 4th of July and the debauchery which followed. In high school I remember my buddy's face on the evening news. Someone had videotaped a fight he was involved in which caused a number of people to be kicked off the train at really shitty spot for a white kid to be dropped off. 

 I moved to Colorado when I was 19. I was seeking adventure and the Mountains and the Western attitude. I used the Amtrak to travel to and from home and once to California on Christmas day. I made friends in the smoking car and brought my whiskey to share (which made me nervous as I was underage). I remember going down there, it's always on the track level, and not even smoking(cigarettes anyway). Everyone was on an adventure! Stories were told and crushes developed. I remember always wanting to "hook-up" on the Amtrak like the way one may fantasize about the "mile high club" on an airplane. Still yet to happen, although once I was traveling by Greyhound, and as this possibility began to develop, chick was pulled off the bus by a police officer because she was a run-away. 

I have since graduated from passenger train travel, and prefer to pay a few more bucks to fly. But, I have not gotten over my joy of travel by freight train or Tren De Cargo as they say in Mexico... At 20, I dropped out of school at Boulder and jumped in a fellow raft guides VW bus (how cliche right?) and headed for a place called Terlingua, Texas. This was a place which I had heard much about that previous summer as I trained on the river with a couple of natives from the area. I guided rivers as the youngest employee and was surrounded by well traveled explorers of rivers, mountains, jungles, and deserts. One guy named Phil, had done some travel which none of the other raft guides had experience with, of course it was via freight train. The conversation probably started around a fire or on the Rio Grande as we had much time to Bull shit during working hours on the river. The customers would go two to a canoe and the guides would grab a bunch of weight, usually water for the group, and cruise either ahead or behind the custies. He told me of a book (I can't find it on the internet) he owned which gave the ins and outs of getting away with this wild idea I had never really imagined doing. I read the book in a day and was "catching out" by that weekend. 

Phil came along he was 34 years old, I was just a kid. I remember reading about the fine if you were caught and neglecting to bring the cash but Phil being prepared. I didn't give a shit, I was a college drop-out with a passion for adventure and nothing to lose. We drove to Alpine, Texas, where we could hop on because there was a shift change there. A shift change location is simply a predetermined spot where the Engineers start or finish a shift. These are known locations all across the country with the closest one being in Hamilton, Montana. As the train slowed we waited in the bushes, about five minutes later the train sounds the horn and begins to roll slowly. This is when we run out of the bush and climb the ladder into a space behind a double stacked cargo box (as seen in any major port like Seattle or Portland), Hobos call them Piggy Back Cars, they are the best to ride on because of the comfort of being hidden and the high priority of the train itself. These are the expensive goods, which need travel from A to B as fast as possible and not stopping for other lower priority train cars like the ones I used to collect iron ore from under. 

We arrived in Tucson, Arizona (shift change) some 16 hours later, only to get back on a train going the other direction. We were then thrown off 5 hours later by the US border patrol as they, in spanish, screamed for us to... one could only guess as my spanish was of little understanding at the time. Nothing happened, the Border Patrol handed us over to the local sheriff and he dropped us off at the next county. We hitched back. 

With a little practice, I was ready for the rumored rails and tunnels of the Copper Canyon in Chihuahua, Mexico. Copper Canyon is a gorge 4 times the size of the Grand Canyon, just not quite as deep. At the end of the commercial season on the Rio Grande in April I was dropped off at the border and made my way to the rumored catch spot.  I rode from San Rafel to Sufragio or vise versa can't recall. The trip was a success. Sixty Four tunnels and some of the most spectacularly clear nights I have ever seen. I rode only one way as I was too afraid to do hop on the way to the canyon. I rode in an open container car this time and had panoramic views from the last car of the train. I was told by a group of Mexican tramps which hop the trains into the states to pick fruit that I was the only American they had ever seen on the line. I felt like some kind of hero. Who needs a ticket anyway?