Huber

Funeral Home & Cremation Services

952-474-9595

Pediatric Rehabilitation Clinic.

Occupational Therapy.  Speech Therapy.

952-443-9888

Victoria’s Corner Bar.  Nightly Specials and Menus.  952-443-9944

Buying or Selling Victoria?

Call Nan Emmer.  612-702-2020

Weinzierl

Jewelers

8 First Street in Waconia.  952-442-2885

Preschool and Childcare in Victoria. 

Call 952-443-2121.

MVT Excavating

No job is too small.  952-446-9341

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Located at www.VictoriaGazette.com.

952-443-2808

Specialized assisted living for those

with memory challenges. 

Victoria.  952-908-2215

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The Victoria

GAZETTE

From the Editor

         I rode the train to Tioga alone since it was time for hunters to be hunting, and mine was doing just that.

         The sleeper room was much more spacious with the top bunk tied up out of the way for the entire night.  I could sit up and turn around without banging my head and my knuckles on the ceiling.  Otherwise it’s sort of like a double decker bathtub, though “compartment” is the correct word for it.  Think glove compartment.  There’s space for a pair of gloves, like me and Allan, and sunglasses and that’s about it.

         I find my way to the Amtrak Station in St. Paul, alone in the dark, 45 minutes on a black road in the rain, get a four-day parking permit, board the train at 10:08 p.m., and it pulls out of the station at 11:05 p.m.  Everything’s on schedule except my sleep.

         I can’t fall asleep on time so I survey my “spacious” surroundings in more detail.  The compartment is 80 inches wide, 44 inches deep, and 74 inches high.  Yes, I usually carry a little retractable tape measure in my purse.  Seems there’s always something to measure.  Considering I’m about 14” wide, 8 inches deep, and 64 inches high, I fit just fine.  When I share the compartment with the hunter, it is not as fine.

         There is “free” champagne and also Ghirardelli chocolates available for sleeper car patrons and I take advantage.  Then I shut off the lights inside my compartment, fluff the pillow a bit, pull the blanket over me, and turn toward the window. 

         Rumble, dumble, tumble goes the train.  It’s like trying to fall asleep on top of a flatbed hayrack stacked high with hay bales, being pulled by a tractor across a stubbled field.  I sway back and forth because of the height -- another compartment is just below me -- and then I’m jerked awake when I begin to doze.

         With my interior lights off, everything is darker than pitch except for the stars so numerous and bright, each like a little blessing sprinkled on the world, on me, and I’m thankful for transportation to see Jenny and the kids, long and lumbering such as it is.  I scan the Universe for the Big Dipper among the brightest stars, then realize my side of the train faces the southern sky.

         I’m not sure just how many times I’m awake in the night, but all of a sudden it’s 6:00 a.m. and breakfast is being announced.  I lie still and prone, not interested in making my way to the Dining Car, relishing instead the privacy of my own little compartment and the darkness of early morning as it anticipates the sun.

         Then I smell coffee.  Each sleeper car has unlimited fresh coffee brewed each morning and boxes of orange, apple, and mango juice.  I unlock my sliding glass door and only a few steps away is the large coffee pot.  I must be very careful walking the aisle with a cup of hot coffee and then very careful drinking the hot coffee in my compartment because of the pitching and swaying. 

         At 7:40 a.m. there is enough light from the rising sun to make out some of the landscape.  There is a white frost on the big flat expanse of earth.  It is Thursday morning, October 22nd, and Victoria has already had snow so I’m not surprised to also see snow in North Dakota.  I can make out big bales of rolled hay scattered in the fields, caught unawares when the early winter arrived, waiting for Indian Summer so they can be picked up and hauled to the barns or an outdoor stack.

         Lots of telephone lines stretch across the vast plain, telling me this distant Dakota land is indeed connected to the rest of the world.  The lonesome train whistle continues to blow in every town and at every crossing.  It goes and goes and where it blows, the conductor knows.

         We stop at Rugby, the geographical center of North America.  The little town is rather nondescript except, as we chug through it, I spy a big shed with a large sign that reads “Dale’s Livery.”  Livery?  In this day and age?  I thought that word died with old country western movies.

         Minot is a longer stop since it’s the metropolis in this part of North Dakota.  There’s an Applebee’s, a Menard’s, a Walmart, and a real shopping mall.  It’s a 90-minute drive to Tioga but this train is taking me to Stanley, which is only 30 minutes from Tioga. 

         After Minot, the flat plains become rolling hills and creeks and valleys with bodies of water bigger than a puddle but smaller than a lake, like Kelzer’s Pond in Victoria.  I see a cemetery in the distance.  People here, too, have come and gone.

         At 9:30 a.m. the sky is clear and blue and soon I’ll see my little girl again and her little kids.  If I do nothing else but hold and hug them for three days, I will be happy.  I sit back and relax with my second cup of coffee.  The porter has turned my bed into two cushioned, comfortable high-back chairs.

         It requires a bit of bravery for me to do the train thing alone through the night.  Makes me feel like a little girl myself, heading away from home, but when I see the kids waiting at the Station for me, I’m once again a mother and grandmother without enough arms to hold them all at the same time.

November 2009