b On Trains

On Trains



It's a little known fact but one of my favourite books is Dee Brown's
'Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow'. A lot of people know one of Dee
Brown's other books a lot better. This is 'Bury My Heart At Wounded
Knee'. Sometimes this gets abbreviated to 'Bury My Heart'. When
something is abbreviated then you know it is famous. This is
symptomatic of our times.


'Bury My Knee' is about the war against the Indians in
America and all that crap. On the other hand HTLWB is about trains in
America and it is not crap at all despite there being a bit about
Indians in there too.


I feel that Dee Brown had to slip the Indians in because he
had already made his name writing about Indians. That is also
symptomatic of our times. When a writer gets famous then he has to
write about the same things over and over.


Someone once said that this is to do with the imaginative
redundancy that is all pervasive in our post-capitalist society. I
don't know if it is true but when you put it like that then it
certainly sounds that way. It is a well-established fact that words of
more than two syllables sound more true than words with less than two
syllables. This is called the illusion of truth.


I should also add here that in HTLWB cowboys also get a
mention. In American folklore Indians often go hand in hand with
cowboys but what a lot of people don't know is that cowboys also go
hand in hand with trains.


Round about the three quarter mark of the 19th century there
was this Big Push to build a train track from the East Coast to the
West Coast of America. The West was then known as the frontier and as
such represented the limit of the American imagination and also was
fundamental in the foundation of a national characteristic.



Some call this set of character traits the frontier
mythology. Canada was different in that it had a fort mythology.
England is not based on any mythology and some would argue this is why
a Marxist movement was able to gain a foothold here once upon a time
and not in America. I wouldn't and I am getting off the point because I
was talking about cowboys in particular.


A lot of cows around this time lived in the Southern States
of America. This was all well and good except these new train tracks
didn't go that far south. That is where the cowboys came in. They had
to move the cows to where the train tracks were. It was quite a job and
I would talk about it more except for the fact that I am talking about
trains and the cowboys never personally got to ride on the trains. This
was symptomatic of being a cowboy.


My three other interesting facts about trains in America in
this order are:


1. The tracks were often built in wiggly lines. Funding for
train tracks was paid by the metre and not for directness. (In modern
times this can be cfed with the way plumbers install interior
pipes.)


2. Train agents were sent to Europe to find people to live in
the new areas made accessible by the train tracks. One agent managed to
sign up a whole village. I would have like to have lived in that
village. 'Come on,' the village leader would have said one day, 'we're
all off to America, pack your toothbrushes and a change of
pants.'


3. The tracks running East to West were built by Irish
workers. Tracks running West to East were built by Chinese workers. The
Chinese workers were called coolies but I don't know what the Irish
workers were called. It might have been paddies.


And this is an extra fact just for the hell of
it:


The poet E E Cummings wrote most of his poems while
travelling on a train. My favourite poem by him is about a cowboy
called Buffalo Bill. It is not really about a cowboy but more about how
our heroes will die one day just like you and me.



****


When I was young neither my mum nor my dad could drive.
Actually that's not true. My dad could drive but after he crashed his
car into a boat he left it there and never went back to collect it.
This is symptomatic of being my father.


Because of our lack of car we always went everywhere by
train. Somehow my dad always managed to get us into first class
carriages although we never had first class tickets. This was a time
when first class people had their own little room on the train. You
sometimes find this kind of room on trains in Europe; especially on
ones in countries that have just joined or want to join the EU. (This
has to do with the illusion of a classless society and will be dealt
with in more complexity at a future date.)


I remember once when we were at Kings Cross station and the
train was about to leave and I saw a man doing a moony out of a window
of the train on the opposite platform. That was all you could see; like
this man was just a bum. I often think of that and even now sometimes I
loiter by the doors of trains I am on that are about to set off
wondering if I will see that kind of thing again.


I don't like pornography much but everyday eroticism is
quite appealing. Alternatively it would make a nice image for a novelty
postcard.


On that train journey we were travelling up to see my
mother's mother and father who lived in Hull. I read the whole of one
of the Folk of the Far Away Tree books on that journey. I can remember
that every time I came across a bit about the character Moonface I
thought about that bum sticking out of the window and smaned to
myself. I was about 6.


I can still see the shape of the carriage and my dad sitting
opposite getting annoyed because of the legroom or something. My dad is
dead now and doesn't have to worry about legroom anymore. He has this
in common with Buffalo Bill.


After we had been in Hull for a few days and my dad had
pissed off my mum's mother and father as much as he was able my dad
took us all hitch-hiking. If we didn't go on trains then this was our
other mode of transport. We were going to a place called
Saltburn.


When we got there I remember standing under these trees with
not a train in sight and then this car stopped. We all got in and then
after a while my dad turned around to me and my brother in the back and
said, 'This is my father'. He meant the guy driving.


I don't know if it was a set up or what although I do know
my dad didn't like his father. He used to say that to me. 'I hate my
father and that is why you hate me. It goes around.'


I didn't hate him it was only sometimes I wanted him to be
my father and not act like my kooky best friend.


****


My favourite train journey is one that is in the South of
France.


That year my dad was living in Antibes and he was working on
a roller-coaster. It was his job to test it every day which meant
walking right along all the tracks. That was funny because my dad hated
heights pretty much more than anything else.


One of my dad's colleagues was this guy called Glen and Glen
became my friend.


Glen worked on Pirate Ship ride at the funfair. In fact he
lived there too; he slept on the wooden seats of the ride. If it rained
then he would go sleep underneath in all the workings and on those days
he would be covered in oil. He didn't seem to care because he didn't
have a mirror. Neither did me or my dad in fact. I like that, looking
back, not having a mirror. It makes like less complex. As does cutting
your own hair. Having a budget of 10 francs a day. Knowing how to get
free drinks from all the local bars.


When Glen was free for the day we would go down to the
station and jump the train. It was great. You could force open the
doors and then sit with your feet dangling outside above the
tracks.


The South of France has a lot of negative things going for
it but one if its plus signs is that it is so beautiful.



It is so beautiful.


At some point Glen and I would jump off the train and then
go swimming. We would swim out to some rocks and we would lie there in
the sun in our underpants because neither of us owned swimming trunks
in those days. It was about 1990.


"The oil's washed off anyway," I would say.


"What oil?"


Glen had this way of looking like he didn't know what I was
talking about. I wonder if he knew I loved him.


***


The most overrated train in the world is probably the
Shinkansen. The Shinkansen is also called the bullet train.



I was living in Japan then and had followed in my father's
footsteps and was working as a teacher. During one of the holidays all
the other teachers decided that they were going to some Paradise
Pacific Island Of Their Own Choosing.


M. who lived upstairs from me said that he wanted to explore
Japan as it was Probably A Place That He Would Never Come Back To. M.
was Jewish and it rumoured that he had a big willie so I decided to go
with him.


We booked tickets to go to Tokushima which is on the island
of Shikoku in the southern area of Japan. The part of the journey Tokyo
to Osaka was to be by bullet train.


What with one thing and another I was pretty excited. It
started pretty well at the station. The train looked impressive. It was
silver and sleek and I felt myself grinning madly at M. as we got on.



However, as we gathered speed pulling out of Tokyo, I knew
that it wouldn't be great. It was like sitting in a bullet. It was
comfortable and fast but it was also anodyne, unromantic, without
glamour. The man in front of us also was smoking a cigar. So it was
like sitting in a bullet full of cigar smoke.


As I was sitting on the train I made a list of the 12 things
I would rather be doing than sitting on that train. I have since lost
the list but later in the day I did find out if M. had a big
willie.


One of the most famous things about Tokushima is that they
have this shit-hot festival called the Awa-Odori. During this festival
everyone dresses up in Japanese clothes and dances in the street. The
dancing in the street part is not symptomatic of being
Japanese.


It is at this point that I should mention that the other
famous thing about Tokushima is the monsoons.


The day we arrived coincided with the biggest monsoon
anybody had seen for ages. Of course the festival was off because who
wanted to dance in a monsoon. It would be a waste of Japanese
time.


I was just thinking what a washout the whole thing was when
a Japanese head poked itself around the door of our room and said that
M. and I were to follow it. We did and we were taken to this big
room.


There was a plan afoot.


It seemed that if we could not go outside to dance then we
would dance inside. Traditional Japanese clothes were brought for me
and M. and we had to put them on right there in the
room.


I don't know if you know much about putting on traditional
Japanese clothes but it is not like shelling peas. The man said that I
had to help M. As he was at the pant putting on stage I was more than
willing.


Of course I am joking when I say that the reason I went with
M. to Tokushima was because of the rumours of him having a big willie.
He was my best friend in Japan and we had a lot to talk about all the
time. Him having a big willie was just something at the back of my
mind.


Nevertheless that day I was surprised to find out how big
his willie was. Even the Japanese man was surprised. He went around the
whole group of people gathered in the room talking in Japanese and
making big willie gestures with his hands.


This resulted in a lot of laughter and somehow seemed to
make up for the fact that the Shinkansen was not that
great.


It is sometimes true that the destination is more important
than the journey. This is the opposite to what you will be lead to
believe if you only watch American road movies.


American road movies owe a lot to that American theory of
the frontier mythology. I don't know if Dee Brown is writing a book
about them but perhaps he should as as I said HTLWB is just about one
of my favourite books of all time. This is a fact that is not widely
known.