Journal: July 19

My parents took us on a lot of trips when we were children, the most ambitious of which, when I was about seven, was a three-day train trip to California. At that time, there were only two of us four children in the family, my brother Graham, and me. I don’t remember too much about it, like where we got on the train, but I do remember that my grandparents, whom we were going to visit, had sent a cardboard box full of goodies for us to open each day on the train. It was like Christmas, waiting for the daily opening of the box. What was in it were things to entertain us as the train pushed across the continent, things like Fun Books with connect-the-dots, and mazes, and word puzzles; coloring books and crayons; tiny toy cars and trucks; books to read. I am sure that what my parents had in mind was for us to see the huge American continent, but what we were interested in was a box of toys that we could just as well have opened and enjoyed at home!

I do remember a few of the things we saw along the way: the endless fields of corn in the Midwest — a whole day’s worth; the huge train station in Chicago; and most of all, the lightning storm that occurred at night crossing Great Salt Lake. By that point, I had developed an abscessed tooth which was swelling up my whole jaw, and I remember how cool the window felt, resting my inflamed cheek against it. I rode that way for hundreds of miles. When I pressed my cheek against the window, the swelling from my tooth moved to the inside of my mouth, crowding my tongue. When we went to a meal in the dining car (I can’t imagine that I was eating much of anything), my cheek would swell back up.

The storm, which I’m not sure anyone else was awake for, terrified me. The rain slashed against the train windows. I thought it was waves from the lake and that we would wreck and the train would derail. The flashing of the lightning, the pelting rain, the lake, on both sides of the train, and then the vast alkaline flats — white and barren and flat — that we raced across in the night.

When we got to California, the first thing we did was get me to a dentist to have the tooth pulled, and I’m sure that then my parents thought we could have a nice remainder of the trip/vacation. But at my grandparents’ cabin on Lake Tahoe, I got the measles and spent those two weeks in bed.