Riding the Rails 11-21-15

Saturday Stories  11-21-15

Riding the Rails

The Railway Express Agency stopped doing business in 1975; it was like UPS only all the shipping was carried on the railroads.  During and after WWII both of Diane’s parents worked for REA in Portland, OR. One of the perks of the job was either free or cheap tickets for train travel.  Diane’s family took advantage of this, so that Diane and Marie could travel to Los Angeles to visit their grandparents.  The first trip, in 1942 was in the company of Great Aunt Effie and a train full of servicemen.  Sailors, soldiers and marines packed the trains and were happy to have two little girls to entertain.  They taught the girls how to play poker, bought them treats from the club car, and one gave Diane his phone number and a dime to call him when she turned eighteen!  During the intervening thirteen years the dime and the number were lost in a house fire.

From 1943 to 1945 the girls lived with their grandparents in Los Angeles, going home to Portland on the train in June 1945 with their mother and her new husband.  In subsequent years the trips south were about every other year.  And, from 1945 on, they traveled alone under the watchful eye of the conductor and the stewards.  They had berths made up so neatly every night by the steward and magically disappearing in the day time.   The dining car was an elegant delight.

The trains they took were the slow trains because that was what the cheap tickets covered, so there were lots of stops along the way.  They called it the “Owl” and its route ended in Oakland.  From there, after a long layover, they went south on the “San Joaquin Daylight” to the grand station in Los Angeles.  As they grew older they took the ferry across to San Francisco and spent the day seeing the sights.  It was a different San Francisco then and nobody worried about them as they made their way to Chinatown, Golden Gate Park and the Japanese Tea House, Coit Tower, and the piers.  Always leaving in time to take the ferry back to Oakland and their train south.  It was an exciting time of freedom and discovery.  The trip to LA  was an overnight, despite the name “Daylight”, and the grandparents and aunt and uncle were there to meet the two girls in the morning.   After staying two or three weeks they headed home in time for school to start in September.

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