I wrote this for my college composition class. We had to write about a memory. This memory is about our move from Chicago to Los Angeles in 1964. I still wonder at how different things looked back then, compared to now. I'm having trouble with how it is formatting to this blog...been fighting it for over an hour, sigh...
The
Redwood Trees
My
car idles gently as I sit in my car watching a train whisk by in
front of me with a thunderous
whoosh,
and I can also feel the pulse that accompanies the sounds of clacking
wheels. The rhythmic
sounds
and the blur of the passing train cars transport my thoughts back in
time. I see myself as a
little girl
nine years of age holding a shopping bag with all of my most
treasured belongings.
Dad had already
made sure our big trunks, which contained the bulk of the belongings
we chose to bring with us,
would be taken to the train's baggage car.Mom had my little brothers
in tow;Fred was four years
old and Patrick was only two. Chicago, the doctor had said, was bad for
my mom's mental and
physical health,
and therefore had advised my parents to move to a new location. We
waited and tried to
occupy ourselves
until it was time to board our train. Dad had shared the picture with
us that was on the
brochure
he had brought home from a travel agency. The picture showed tall
redwood trees, a whole forest
of them, and he proclaimed excitedly “That's where we are going,
Susan!”. Living in a forest of redwood
trees had filled me with anticipation. I wondered what would it be
like
to live in a forest. We had
always lived in a city, however, before we came to America the
buildings
were nowhere near as tall
as they were in the city of Chicago.
Living in a redwood forest would
be a completely different way of
life, and it would be a whole new
beginning for us.
Just
before reaching the station dad had gotten us a little carton of
fried rice, one of the little “to go”
boxes,
from a Chinese food restaurant. We had all shared a few bites of it
while we were waiting. That
rice
was delicious, however, I was still hungry after those few bites
because it was dinnertime and those
few bites weren't enough to fill my hungry tummy. I
held on to my daddy's hand with my right hand as my left hand still
held onto my grocery bag's handles
tightly. It was finally time to go to our train. We hurried to the
platform where our train awaited
us. It was going to be a long ride from Chicago to California. I set
my bag at my feet in front of me,
and then leaned back into my seat. I was seated in a middle seat, and
was not by a window, but there
really wasn't all that much to see out of the window. People were
scurrying this way and that on the
platform as they rushed to board the train. I reached in front of me
and dug into my bag. I had put
some
Hopjes coffee candy into my bag of my personal treasures and the
hunger in my tummy now
urged
me to find them. I first had to move my Chinese wind chimes that were
made of delicate glass.
The
chimes had to be placed on top of everything so that they wouldn't be
crushed and be broken by
the
weight of the rest of my stuff. I loved the sound of the musical
tinkling of those chimes. Maybe I
would
be able to hang them from the branch of a redwood tree. The chimes
would look so lovely
hanging
on a tree. They tinkled merrily while I held them up with my left
hand, and dug through my
bag
with my right.
The
candies were way at the bottom, beneath my sweater and underneath my
favorite doll, the only doll I was allowed to bring with me. There were several
other dolls and stuff that the
limitations
of what we could bring on our move had forced me to leave in
Chicago. When I found the
candy
package I removed one piece, and then returned the rest of the candy,
and my Chinese chimes,
carefully
into my shopping bag.I
had taken a ride on a train once before. When we first came to
America from the Netherlands, we came
to the U.S. by boat. The exodus of that previous time took us
through Ellis Island, and from there,
we quickly transferred onto a train headed west for Chicago because
my mom insisted that we could
not remain in New York. She did not like what she had heard about
that big city. She did not realize
that Chicago was also a big city with huge, intimidating high rises.
In all her life she had never seen
such buildings, and she felt suffocated by them. The highrises
blocked out so much of the sky, and
they
were dirty and gray. I thought about the big redwood trees. Those
huge trees would also be very
tall
and would block out much of the beautiful blue sky, but redwood trees
are beautiful and natural,
and
they are not at all like the ugly buildings of concrete and glass. I
pondered these thoughts as I sat
there
enjoying my coffee flavored candy.
I
had been given a coloring book and crayons at the train station.
Sitting quietly in my seat, I sud-
denly
got the urge to do some coloring. Reaching back into my bag my
tinkling chimes had to come up
again,
this time to seek out my crayons and coloring book. I would reach
into my bag several times
during
the trip, sometimes during the middle of the night, to the
consternation of the other train pass-
engers
as I blessed the sleeping passengers with the beautiful sounds of
those tinkling chimes.
The
train ride seemed to go on and on forever. My dad changed seats with
me so I could look out
through
the window as we continued on our long journey. Whenever we came to a
curving bend in the
train's
tracks, I could look back and see other train cars behind ours, and
when there was no bend in the
tracks,
I could only see the countryside. Mostly I saw farmlands with green
plants in long and pretty
rows,
or I saw cows grazing in pastures. Sometimes we passed through wooded
and hilly areas, and
then
everything would go dark while we went through a tunnel that went
deep into the inside of a
mountain.
Then we would come out of the mountain tunnel on the other side, to
see daylight once
again.
When
my gaze turned from the window it almost seemed as though we were
not moving at all. The
low
rumbling sounds of the wheels moving along the tracks, and the
vibration of our movement with in the
train car were the only things, other than the view of passing
scenery seen through the window, that
gave
evidence that the train was constantly moving.
Hour
after hour we continued on toward our destination. Santa
Fe All the Way,
was the slogan
printed
on my coloring book, and on the inside were outlines of a little
Indian boy tracking a bunny
rabbit.
The Indian boy that was pictured on the inside pages of the coloring
book was the same little
boy
who was pictured on the train company's logo.
I
noticed that the sounds of the wheels were slowing, and outside the
window I could see buildings
and
streets. We were stopping in this town so I tried to see if I could
find any glimpse of the redwood
forest.
There was not a trace of huge trees anywhere, so I looked at my dad
with a questioning look. He
smiled
knowing my thoughts and said “We are in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We
still have a long way to
go.”
I sighed as I settled back into my comfortable spot. I had grown
tired of coloring. I had colored
almost
every page of my entire coloring book. I put the coloring book back
into my bag . My eyes
grew
heavy and I fell sound asleep.
“Wake
up, Susan” It was my mom telling me it was time to leave the train.
We had arrived at our
destination
at last. Oh the excitement of it, I would get to see those beautiful
reddish brown tree trunks
of
the huge redwood trees. I held on tightly to my bag as we were herded
off the train. My legs felt a
little
funny and wobbly from being in my seat for so long. It was good to be
standing again. “Where is
daddy?”
I asked my mom. “He has to get the rest of our luggage” was mom's
answer to me. I could
hardly
wait to leave the station so our eyes could celebrate the vision of
those beautiful trees.
When
we stepped outside of the station, there was hardly a tree in sight.
The trees that I did see
were
hardly more than large shrubs compared to the trees that were
pictured on the brochures. I asked
my
dad “Daddy, where are the big redwood trees?” He simply laughed
at me and said “We are in Los
Angeles,
honey.” I had to simply accept the fact that this was something
only grownups would know the
answer to, and not a little kid like me.
Now
that I look back, I chuckle at my innocent naivete. The picture of
the redwood forest on the cover
of
the brochure was not a picture of our destination, but it was
simply a picture of something California
is
famous for. It was just one example of the many things that I
would get wrong, like the time
I believed that
using a certain shampoo would make my comb float
through my hair all by itself, just
like the comb floated
through the woman's hair in the commercial
after she used that shampoo. Life
was going to be different from
how it was before, but it would also
be very different from how I had
imagined it would be.
The
clacking sounds of the train grow softer and softer, and slowly fade
into the distance. The
gates
that separate my car from the railway tracks slowly rise up. All the
cars around me begin to stir
as
if coming back to life again. Looking at the clock on the dashboard I
notice that almost five minutes
have
gone by while I was waiting for the train to pass. As I rush over
the tracks I hope to myself that
this
little interruption in my day does not cause me to be late for work.
Maybe if I hurry I can make up
those
lost few minutes and still make it to work on time.
