Reminiscing

In 1978 my family took a trip to New Jersey to visit relatives. My father's side of the family was spread around the state. I believe we were there because my grandmother was going to have surgery on her optic nerve. She was very active with friends and traveled all over the world. Most of her travel was by rail and the majority of it back in the 1930's through the 1960's. The heyday of rail travel. It was extravagant and lavish. Service was the centerpiece of the experience. She knew I had a fascination with trains from a young age and gave me a number of documents and souvenir's from her travels. At the time I wasn't overly enthusiastic. I was a fourteen year old kid that just got a bunch of "old stuff" from his grandmother. Granted it was old train "stuff", but it just didn't have the pizazz that a fourteen year old boy is looking for. I do recall enjoying the look of the publications and the musty old smell of the pages. I really had no clue as to what they would eventually mean to me in the future.

A few months back while looking for something buried deep within the black hole that is most peoples garages (unless you are one of the sicko's that parks a car in there!!), I came across an expandable folder with an elastic closure. I recall having had a few of these style envelopes with keepsake type items inside. They were being discarded at my fathers office and I felt they had a few more miles in them before they were relegated to the trash heap. I knew one folder contained all of my Naval discharge paperwork. Assuming this was that envelope, I casually opened it just to confirm before it placed it back into it's makeshift tomb. The first thing that caught my eye was a large 9x12 envelope. It wasn't the envelope itself that caught my eye, but what was printed on the outside. A blue Nickel Plate Road logo! I knew I was in for a treat. Some 30 years ago, my grandmother gave me some memerobilia and souvenir's that were now in the envelope I held in my shaking hands. I recalled the mild disinterest when she gave them to me thirty years ago. I also remember thinking I would someday come to appreciate their meaning. "I suppose that someday is here", I thought. I had a slight sensation of giddyness. That Christmas morning as a child feeling. I was grateful that my grandmother was able to see the interest within me for railroads, to part with souvenir's of magnificent trips and memories of a lifetime. I slid the envelope out of the folder and saw this.



Some vivid memories came rushing back. I recall looking through this very envelope at the pictures from her trip to Promontory, Utah in May of 1969 for the centennial anniversary of the Golden Spike Ceremony. That celebrated the completion of the transcontinental railroad. There was a recreation of an original poster on the wall of that room with "old west" style fonts announcing the "Great Event".

"Through to San Francisco in less than four days, avoiding the dangers of the sea!"

The room had a reddish wallpaper with some sort of design, probably paisley. There were toys from her childrens youth and some from her parents. An old wicker baby carriage, handmade dolls and clothes. The poster was placed in a way that it was a centerpiece for the wall.

"Pullman's Palace Sleeping Cars run with all through passenger trains."

Opening the envelope I gingerly removed the contents. Just beneath the envelope there was a dated publication. It was a Burlington Escorted Tours summer 1935 tour book. It described 20 tours ranging from seven to twenty five days in length.



Inside the cover of the tour book was a pocket itinerary


On the front page is the name of the Burlington escort, T.W. Coover. The itinerary was for tour "P". I didn't put two and two together at first. Later I realized the tours in the tour book were given letters. The pocket itinerary matched that of tour "P" in the larger book. The itinerary description...




What I found amazing, this twenty day trip had a maximum price of $321. Folded up further inside the tour book was a passenger manifest as well as a Southern Pacific passenger ticket for August 29th.



I looked on Google calendar to see what day of the week August 29, 1935 was. It was a Thursday. Looking at the pocket itinerary, they would have arrived in in San Francisco by ferry from Oakland that day. It's possible she took the Southern Pacific commute train that went down the peninsula to some location for the evening. Her ticket was punched for one zone only meaning she didn't travel very far. CalTrain currently uses the same type of zone ticketing. Your fare is determined by the number of zones you will be traveling through.

Digging deeper into the stack of discovery, I found a Pullman brochure from the 1939 World's Fair in New York. This page showing the average fare for a three hundred mile overnight trip.

I wish I could post each page of every item I looked through. They brought back wonderful memories of my grandmother and enjoying the same pages as a child. Unfortunately there is not enough time in the day to blog about all of life's simple pleasures. More fond memories of relatives and childhood will have to wit until another day.

You can see all of the scanned items on my Flickr page!

Back To The Real World

The vacation in tropical paradise is over. I've been back to work for three days and I had to get sick. Here I was the only person in our family to take "Airborne" for the trip and I'm the one that gets sick! I'm sitting in my recliner blogging in my pajamas. No waves crashing in the background, no tropical birds chirping, no ceiling fan gently whirling in the warm air. Just the unemployed next door neighbor listening to rap/hip hop at unhealthy decibel levels and the guy across the street drinking a beer in his garage staring into our front window. The neighbors two doors down sitting on the couch on their front potch listening to loud mariachi music. I don't know why I would rather be in Hawaii than at home!

Our neighborhood has steadily degraded over the last few years. One neighbor has a pot card which gives him the right to grow six pot plants. I'm sure it's for his terminal illness that he struggles with every day. No...wait...that would be his laziness that he "struggles" with as he sells his medicinal pot to the neighborhood hoodlums. I hope I don't sound too acidic, but I really loathe the fact that he is obviously sponging off my tax dollars in some way. In the 22 years that I have lived in this location, I am not aware of him ever having a job other than delinquent or drug dealer. His live-in girlfriend goes to work every day. His two older brothers go to work every day. All of his neighbors go to work every day and he just bilks us out of our tax dollars for whatever "assistance" he is on.

Dirtbag

On a happier note, I will be a grandfather soon! Possibly mid-April of next year. I'm definitely way too young to be a grandfather. Although I can also say that about being a father as well. My daughter was born 10 days after my 20th birthday. I was deployed with the Navy at the time in Puerto Rico. I didn't get to see her for the first time until she was three weeks old. It seems hard to believe that she's old enough to have children! We were dropping her off at pre-school just a few short years ago. Time moves rather quickly and you really don't notice until there is quite a bit of it behind you.

I'll leave you with a very short video of what I had to leave behind in Maui.

Aloha! Part II

I took the above shot in the Iao Valley Park. I'm not sure what kind of flower but it's beautiful, eh? We are in the middle of seven glorious days on Maui. So far we have been to the Haleakala Crater,




the Iao Valley.



the Sugar Cane Train in Lahaina (Lahaina, Kaanapali and Pacific Railroad),



The engineer that operated this steam locomotive was a twenty-something woman!

Aloha!

Posting from the Outrigger in Waikiki! It's a beautiful hotel with really great service and amenities.
Our trip was mostly uneventful. One situation in LAX was a little tense. My wife and sister-in-law went to find a place to smoke after our flight from San Jose to LAX. My wife had her boarding pass with her but not her ID. My sister-in-law had to beat feet from the security check point to the boarding area to get her ID. My wife got through and returned to the boarding area in time to have our boarding numbers called!

Five and a half hours of flight is a long time! It's been a while since I've done that. We had a van pick us up and do the sardine squeeze to the hotel. They checked us in quickly and we went up to our rooms. My parents had a fruit basket and bottle of champagne waiting for them. It was sent by her neice Melody and husband Curtis. It was a nice touch.

After getting relatively settled in our rooms, we went to scope out the dinner situation. Waikiki is a twenty-something haven. The place is teeming with amped up "beautiful people". Most of the hotel restaraunts were filled with loud and boisterous youngun's just learning how to hold their liquor. Makes me feel like an old codger! I just wanted a place to eat that I didn't have to wait an hour and a half to get into and sport my own ear plugs. We ended up ordering Roundtable Pizza in the room! It still took nearly an hour but we could at least talk without shouting.

My wife and Sister-in-law had gone downstairs to smoke *see footnote*. My brother and I were going to run across the street to the ABC store to get some water. I wanted cerveza for the pizza as well. We didn't see them in the "smoking area". I said I would bet they were in the ABC Store. Sure enough! As we entered there they were shopping away. Fortunately no purchases were made since the 6 pack of bottled water and Corona came to $15.25, ouch! Most things are ridiculously iced so I'm really not surprised. That reminds me, at the Burger King inside the LAX boarding terminal, they had some of their meal combos priced at over nine dollars. Captive audience, right?

Slept fairly well. I'm not used to a regular bed since I have slept on a waterbed for the last 18 or so years. This morning we have our welcome breakfast where they will give us some tour/sightseeing information. They expressly said at the airport when picking us up "no timeshare". Nice to know they aren't trying to sell us anything. Today we are probably going to do some Pearl Harbor touring. Being Labor Day we will probably stay away from the Arizona and the crowds.

*footnote* - Smokers are mercilessly persecuted at airports and in Hawaii. Smoking is treated as a disease that should be exorcised from the planet. You actually sign an acknowledgement at hotel registration that you will be fined $250 for smoking in the room. The security at Honolulu International treated the ladies nearly as well as terrorist suspects when they were smoking in the wrong place outside. Security actually made them put out their cigarettes to walk across the street and smoke. Zieg Hiel!!!

Vacation Anticipation

Three days on Oahu and seven on Maui. I'm getting a little light headed just thinking about it. I've been to Maui one other time in 2000. It was wonderful. There was a drought at the time so it only rained for a few minutes on one of the seven days that we were there.

Rather idyllic I must say. We did the road to Hana thing. Being dry it was probably not as impressive as when there were active waterfalls plunging through tropical foliage. Did the deep sea fishing trip. My mother-in-law caught a nine foot Marlin of about 250 pounds. It was interesting but I don't think I would do it again. The most memorable activity was the snorkling. Christmas morning the kids opened the few presents that we brought along with us and then we went to the 14 mile marker on the road to Ka'anapali. We must have been in the water for about four hours. It was just amazing. It was knee deep to chest deep at least one hundred yards from the beach. This meant you had to be careful not to brush up against the coral however. The aquatic life we saw was fabulous. Just like a National Geographic article. Fish with all the colors of the rainbow would swim up to you. I think that was because many people would bring various forms of fish food into the water with them. Kind of like pidgeons and seagulls, these fish were scavengers looking for the easy meal. We didn't have food but they would approach anyway.

This time around I would like to see more in the way of the countryside. There is the Haleakala crater, Iao Needle, the north shore. Tedeschi winery also sounds intersting. They produce pineapple wine. The grounds are reportedly spectacular. We had done a quick jaunt into Lahaina a few times on our last trip. We did the Old Lahaina Luau, Hard Rock Cafe and Bubba Gump's. I think we may have shopped one afternoon. I would like to see some of the historic buildings in the town. I guess when you're an old coot like me (hmm) you want to do those kinds of things. I just find history extremely interesting.

On Oahu we will do the obligatory Pearl Harbor excursions. There is also an aviation museum I would like to check out. It's a mini New York so I guess we won't be bored. It will be my first time there except for being at the airport on six other occasions. If you have any suggestions for the off-the-beaten-path excursion, leave me a comment and any tip that would come in handy on the islands.