Freight Trains, Fate, and a Ride Home

I was in Vancouver, trying to get back home to Minneapolis. Somebody told me about a guy with a van who was also going there. I asked him for a ride, but he was taking a girl along and didn’t want any other passengers.

Then someone suggested hopping a freight train, so I hitchhiked to Seattle and found a train going east. In the middle of the night, the train stopped. After waiting a long time for it to get moving, I looked out the door and saw that my boxcar had been uncoupled and was just sitting there on a siding.

I found another train, which headed up over the Cascade Mountains. Waking in the night, I took a pee out the door and saw huge, jagged, snow-capped peaks under a black sky filled with brilliant stars. The next day was a pleasant ride on a flatcar across eastern Washington.

That night, going over the Continental Divide, it got really cold, so I put on all the clothes I had. I went to sleep, but when the train went over a rough section of track, I awoke being thrown into the air and then slammed onto the cold steel floor of the boxcar.

The next morning, when the train pulled into Livingston, Montana, I looked out, saw a restaurant, and went over to order a big breakfast. As I sat there eating, I saw the train start to move and felt glad I wasn’t on it. I walked out to the freeway and tried to hitchhike, but there was almost no traffic, so I came back into town and found out about another train leaving that night.

To kill time, I went into a bar, sat down, and ordered a beer. I glanced over at the next table, and there sat the guy who had refused me a ride in Vancouver. He told me the girl had decided not to come along after all, and that I could have a ride to Minneapolis.