That Sad and Lonely Feeling

It was a December day on Sunday morning, I remember that well. I sat in Church and looked out the window at the world outside. I was a dark shell of a man that day, weighed down by things that seemed to strike deep at the heart. Outside, a snow began to fall, and fall, and fall. The dormant browns of winter were being replaced by a beautiful white blanket that covered the muddy spoiled banks of the nearby housing construction projects. As I stepped outside into the gathering whiteness, I was struck that there was something that should be done. I returned home and gathered my camera gear and pointed the old truck north and out of Pullman.

The Milwaukee Road's last winter was in 1979/80, having been in bankruptcy for two years already. I've been told that winter was a brutal and cold one; one that seemed to punish the crews and the people who worked so desperately to keep things rolling across Lines West. Snow has an uncanny ability to beautify and mystify a scene, and the photographs of old freight trains trudging through Central Washington and into oblivion haunt me. That was why on that cold and snowy Sunday morning, with a heart already heavy about other problems that life seems to send our way on occasion, I headed north to Rosalia to find an old friend who had seen it all before.

The large concrete arches of the bridge at Rosalia are striking at any time of year. Looking carefully one can still find an old Milwaukee Road sign painted on the concrete next to the road. Through icy roads and continuing snow I had arrived beneath the old bridge. Graffiti on the bridge from 1954 still read "RHS" for Rosalia High School clearly enough. Sometimes feeling small is the best cure for feeling bad, all of a sudden things aren't all about you. The cold winds and blowing snow that surrounded Rosalia and the ghosts of The Milwaukee Road can make me feel real small. As I've said before, it is a journey into the heart indeed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rock-a-bye bye bye?

Image
There are footnotes to history and there are chapters. Dependent on your perspective, sometimes those footnotes deserve a book unto themselves. As the economy sagged in the seventies, railroads were hit hard. The East saw a general collapse in the form of Penn Central. As the seventies wore on, the PC would be combined with several other bankrupt roads to form Conrail, a government backed corporation who's sole goal was to save rail transportation in the eastern half of the country. Collapse worked its way through the western lines during these years as well. The Milwaukee Road pulled out of the West just over 30 years ago at the beginning of March. Bankrupt and reeling, its retreat to the Midwest would last only a few more years until its absorption by Soo Line. Its competitors in the West and Northwest managed to hang on, but healthy balance sheets were not to be found in the board rooms of the Cascade Green lines in those years. The Rock Island had a long flirtation with...
Read more

Hidden in the Trees

Image
 MP1613.1, Ravenna, MT.  Substation 9  I once met the man who owned the old Substation at Ravenna.  In one of those strange twists of history, so I'm told, it was supposed to be torn down and sold for scrap as the bricks had value.  But the original sale didn't work, the scrapper never came and it remains standing near the howling roar of I90 to this day. I90 is just one part of  the U.S. system that moves upwards of 90% of freight by truck and highway.  But tucked in amongst the tall pines like a mirage, Ravenna looks out blankly towards that interstate and shouts quietly back about a different time. The year was 1972 and General Electric had put together a unique proposal: completion of the electrified railway portion of the Milwaukee Road.  In a formal proposal, offered by GE itself ("Proposal for the Completion of the Electrified Railway Operation of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company") via the Locomotive Products De...
Read more

Between Mountain Ranges

Image
Location:  Ralston, WA The lands east of the Cascades and west of the Bitterroots are remarkable in their variety and beauty.  Between these two ranges lie high desert country, rolling wheat fields, foot hills, massive rivers, tumbling sage, abundant wild flowers, rain shadows, endless skies, and a long, long right of way plotted by America's Resourceful Railroad. To this land between mountain crossings the Milwaukee Road journeyed.  While other parts of the Western Extension existed in near infamy, this land existed in relative quiet.  Like the lands east of electrification, it existed out of the spotlight and away from many photographer's cameras.  The summer heat is harsh and the treeless plains offer little relief.  The winter is cold and the winds have little to break their howl as they roll across the undulating landscape. The small town of Ralston sits along the right of way here.  It rests beneath Washington skies as the clouds that break apart over the Cascade Range ro...
Read more