Memories from a Cross-Country Train Ride, with a Pair of Lessons

"Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed."
– Thich Nhat Hanh

The year I turned eight my parents allowed me to skip school for three weeks to go on a cross-country trip with my grandparents. (With permission from my teacher, of course.) My family was living a suburb of Cleveland at the time. My grandparents were going out West to see my Aunt Ellen, Uncle Dale and my cousins in Winnemucca in Nevada. It took three days to go from Cleveland to Reno. Uncle Dale picked us up. I'll never forget the lights as we drove through Downtown Reno at what must have been midnight.

My mother is fond of saying, "It's funny the things we remember." That trip with Grandma and Grandpa is chock full of memories. Here's a story from that adventure.

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We didn't have sleeper cars on this journey. As I remember it the three of us sat side by side with me at the window throughout that cross-country excursion. One highlight was riding through the Rocky Mountains at a relatively high altitude with a deep gorge alongside the tracks to my left. Grandma pointed across the gorge to a train hugging the mountain going the opposite direction and said, "That's where we will be in a little bit." In other words we were on the same track and they were ahead of us by about 15 minutes,

When we reached the far end of this turnabout she had me look down into the valley where there were a dozen abandoned, run-down cabins and bins. Grandma said it was a ghost town, which gave a new meaning to the word "ghost."

This story here is about an experience that took place on the plains, most likely in Nebraska while heading east. It was the middle of the night. I was awake and staring out the window, scanning the darkness when I noticed a very unusual sight. On the ground alongside the tracks we were on there were two streaks of glowing orange. The streaks were glowing like the embers after a fireplace has been spent, throbbing with heat. 

What was it? It was spooky. So I woke my grandmother who was seated next to me and she didn't know either. On and on it seemed to go for miles. 

Suddenly our train began to slow, then the lights went on and we came to a stop. The mystery was explained.

There were two railroad tracks running parallel across the prairie. As it turned out, a passenger train on the other track had come to a halt because the last five cars had jumped the track. The glowing was produced by friction on the limestone that held the railroadties and track in place. Our train stopped, essentially in the middle of nowhere, so that the passengers on the disabled train could be rescued and transported to the next station along the way. 

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LESSON ONE
Occasionally in life we experience mysteries that we don't understand. From the vantage point of the future these mysteries become quite clear. There are simple explanations which we may have understood from the start had we more experience.

LESSON TWO
When our train stopped to help the passengers on the other train, our passengers were inconvenienced for a bit. Not only was there a delay in reachng our destination, there was a need to cram all the extra passengers into our railroad cars. So it is that when people's lives go off the rails or they have simply jumped the track and are stuck... The lesson is clear. The engineer of our train could not, in good conscience, simply ignore the disabled railroad and pass on the other side. Nor should we.

See: The Parable of the Good Samaritan

If I may paraphrase a famous president:
"Ask not what your neighbor can do for you,

but what you can do for your neighbor."