Headed to the homeland…
I am planning a trip to California in a few weeks. I was born and raised in California, and my sister lives there in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It’s been eight years since I visited my sister there—time to go home again. I plan to spend almost two weeks there and have a loose list of things to do, see and photograph.
Some of the places I have on my list are:
Bodie - a ghost town Mono Lake Ancient Bristlecone Pine Tree Forest Laws Railroad Museum Alabama Hills area Horseshoe Meadows - gateway to the Golden Trout Wilderness Death Valley Kelso - a ghost town in the Mojave Desert Darwin and Ballarat - ghost towns (time permitting) Joshua Tree National Park (time permitting).
I will have two weeks to just roam and enjoy visiting old haunts. I am particularly looking forward to Bodie and the Laws Railroad Museum. I went to both a long time ago, in what feels like a different life, but the photos I have from those trips are pretty poor. I am hoping to do better, but my primary motivation for visiting those sites and for the trip in general is to have fun and enjoy the moment.
On the subject of train museums, my friend David, who is also the Managing Director of the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts and another train fan-boy, and I visited the Steamtown Historic Site in Scranton, PA, this past June for the Big Boy Reunion. The Big Boy was a name given to a series of articulated steam locomotives built for the Union Pacific Railroad between 1941 and 1944. The Union Pacific built 25 Big Boys, considered the largest steam locomotives ever built and successfully operated. Eight Big Boys survive: seven are on static display, and one, X4014, is still operational. As part of the celebration of America’s 250th birthday, X4014 made a coast-to-coast run that included a stop at Steamtown to reunite with X4012, which is on static display there. We were lucky enough on the evening of our arrival to be in just the right place at just the right time to witness the arrival of X4014 in Scranton, albeit backing into Steamtown, slowly, very slowly. Below is a video of that arrival, along with a few images from our visit to the site over the next two days.
My fascination with trains may be genetic, but at least nurtured. My father loved trains. After his studies and teaching at Stanford for a few years, he made the decision to leave academia and start his own business — a wholesale distribution company selling HO gauge model railroad supplies, Pike Supply. It was mostly a one-man show and run out of our family home. So, I grew up with trains in our home. I had several model railroad sets throughout my childhood, and there were family trips to visit railroad sites, to see and sometimes ride still-running steam-powered trains, etc. So, to paraphrase the often-used expression, my fascination with trains is probably genetic (nature), but certainly partly due to immersion (nurture).
I didn’t truly understand the depth of my father’s love of trains until I received, as part of my mother’s estate, a leather case holding my father’s V-Mail letters sent home while serving in Europe during World War II. V-mail, short for Victory Mail, was a process the United States used during II as the primary, secure method for corresponding with soldiers stationed abroad. To reduce the cost of transferring an original letter through the postal system and to free up space for essential war supplies, a soldier’s letter would be censored, copied to film, and printed on photographic paper upon arrival in the US and forwarded on to the soldier’s family or friends. The letters back to the soldier were handled in the same fashion.
Included in the stack of letters is the following from October 1994, when my father was stationed with the 1052nd Signal Corps of the United States Army Air Corps in France, close to the German Border:
Dear Mother -
Your letters of the 23rd & 24th came through in 15 days each, which isn't bad. I could read your typed letter perfectly. I just thought you might have trouble because I used caps all the way through. You have never mentioned how you get along with my typed letters. I am sorry if you found my letters too flippant when I did not know the condition at home. I am very sorry about it. I am very happy over here and cannot conceal the fact.
One of the amusing incidents which occurred since arrival here was in connection with a narrow gauge steam engine we discovered over here. It was used by the Germans to haul bombs and so forth. Without knowing how we tried to fire it up, and a boy and I sat up all one night trying to do so. One night, real late, we had it going and were racing down the tracks, having the time of our lives, when all of a sudden the engine simultaneously jumped the tracks and blew the boiler and put an end to our dreams of having railroad transportation for our work. You know my affinity for trains and can imagine how wild I was when I discovered the train. We were a sorry lot when the fatal accident happened. A Frenchman had told us the engine was sabotaged, but we wouldn't listen.
I wrote a letter to Beth at Cranbrook, assuming that she is staying on. I think it is a swell idea. This is about all. Everything is lovely.
Lots of love, Byrne
My father was lucky, and so was I, that he was not seriously injured or killed. More often than not, a rupture of a steam locomotive’s boiler could and often did seriously injure or kill train crews in the steam era. I would also like to point out that my lifelong tendency toward ill-considered, reckless behavior may be something else I might have inherited, whether by nature or nurture, from my father, although, in his defense, that type of behavior was something he left behind relatively early in adulthood, whereas I was still quite reckless until my early sixties (3 serious motorcycle accidents!).
I am looking forward to being on the road, visiting my sister, and photographing old haunts. I will be posting daily, even if it is just a single image, throughout the trip. I hope you will follow along.
Cheers, Ciao, Adios, See Ya.
