Southwest Chief

About thirty years ago, I was taking the Amtrak (the Southwest Chief) to Albuquerque when I met a beautiful woman in the dining car. It was a 24-hour ride from Illinois, and I was bleary-eyed from a night of very restless sleep in a coach car. I had tried to help a gentleman who didn’t know where he was, and that question wasn’t resolved by morning, so I really needed a cup of coffee. I went into a ritzy part of the dining car and the waitress served me a delicious cup of coffee, then told me that breakfast would start at twenty dollars. I said that I couldn’t afford that much, and she instantly turned from sweet to hot, saying I didn’t belong in that part of the dining car. Everybody at the table laughed and said, “Aw, let him have his cup of coffee!” The waitress was mad, but I finished my coffee before going back to the plebeian part of the car.

Once there I sat down across from the beautiful woman I mentioned, and she didn’t seem to take a liking to me either. But I noticed she was reading The Perennial Philosophy, by Aldous Huxley. That immediately interested me, and I said, “Oh, Huxley - do you like what you’re reading?” She looked at me in shock and said, “Oh yes!” and then smiled. And her attitude changed into one of acceptance. We discussed Huxley and Jung and several other authors.

We got on famously, and it turned out that she had been in another coach car during the night and hadn’t gotten any sleep either. She was heading to California to see a friend who was dying of cancer. It turned out she was Dutch, and she told me an extraordinary tale of being on a trolley car that was stopped by a group of German soldiers in World War II. They ordered all the passengers off, then gunned them down. The little girl was saved because the bodies of other passengers fell on her. We talked about the other people on the train. She said she didn’t understand how the other women on the train could make themselves up so well in the cramped ladies room, but she excused herself at one point and came back with fresh lipstick and makeup. I felt that she really liked me.

As we approached Albuquerque we went down to a platform where we could see the red rock of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains go rushing by. I took a picture of her which I still have.





We got to Albuquerque and came into the station. I ran to an apple vendor and got an apple to clear my breath. Then I turned around to see her deboard the train. I went to her and asked if she would stay in Albuquerque with me. She said, “My friend, in California.” She had a higher purpose. So I kissed her and we parted ways. Thinking back, maybe I should have continued with her. Or maybe not. I figure she would be about 83 now, in 2021.