On the other side of 551 East Roscoe Street was a big white wooden house, like a farmhouse, with only one family in it, and a porch all around. Next to that was an apartment house eight stories high, with an elevator. In the other direction, next to the apartment house just like ours, was one with two apartments and a big front lawn. All kinds of houses on the one street.
There were also all kinds of kids. The backyards were connected—either there were no fences or there were gaps in the fences, so it made one big space. We kids owned the backyards. We had our own world in the backyards.
The adults were working all the time, so older kids were in charge of younger kids. My sister, Eloise, was supposed to watch me, which meant she sat on the back steps, reading or doing her homework and not watching me at all. I think the idea was that she was there in case somebody started to actually kill me.
The kids really in charge of the little kids were the slightly younger older kids, like Ronnie Wolfspit. Ronnie was in seventh grade, and he did not so much take care of us as supervise the games.
These are the names of some of the games we played: Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, San Juan Hill, Verdun, Iwo Jima. Those are all battles. We were soldiers. Ronnie, or one of the other older kids, but usually Ronnie, would tell us which side we were on and what to do. Mostly what we did was run at each other with swords or shoot at each other with guns. We got most of the swords and guns by pulling boards out of an old fence. We all practiced dying, and everybody was good at it. The battle games were good—we all got to run around and yell, and we got dirty and everybody got to die repeatedly.
Another category of games had names like The Three Musketeers, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Moby Dick, Mysterious Island, and From the Earth to the Moon. These are books. The older kids had read them, either in book form or in the Classics Comics version. These were better than the battle games because you got to be a character. One of the best parts was Captain Nemo, who was this weird crazy guy who had his own submarine. Ronnie Wolfspit did an excellent Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame. I can still see him, dragging Ruthie, the little girl who lived in the basement apartment, up the back steps, hollering, "Sanctuary, sanctuary!"
In addition to having us act out the books, the older brothers and sisters used to read to us little kids. They didn't read little-kid books to us—they read what they wanted to read. Ronnie Wolfspit was a big Jules Verne fan, for example, and my sister, Eloise, seemed to like books about bloodthirsty pirates. Sometimes my mother would read to me about Peter Rabbit as a bedtime story, when earlier in the day Eloise had been reading to me, and some other kids, about William Teach, also known as Blackbeard the Pirate, boarding ships and hanging people and slicing them with a cutlass. It was all good.
We also played Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and Superman, and Captain Midnight, which were movies and radio programs. The thing about all these games was that they were all about adventure. They were all about people going off away from their familiar homes to do important stuff. And in the world outside the backyards, it was like that. People were going off to war, and moving to different parts of the country to do different jobs. And people were arriving from places far away. Some of the kids were refugees—that is, kids whose families had escaped from Europe. There was Jan the Dutch kid, who always wore this brown overcoat, and Helmut the German kid, who refused to play Nazis in the battle games, and Luigi, whose salami sandwiches smelled better than ours.
I expected, we all expected, to do exciting things, and be a hero, like Dart-Onion, or Hopalong Cassidy, or the Count of Monte Cristo. This is why going away on a big adventure all the way across the country seemed normal to me. It is also why, when I was taken to the Louis B. Nettelhorst Elementary School to begin first grade, I said I wanted to major in literature.
CHAPTER 3
More About My Childhood
The reason I knew how Luigi DePalma's salami sandwiches smelled was that they were his lunch when we went to the Julian on Saturday mornings. The Julian was a movie house on Belmont Avenue. I had heard about it for years before I was old enough to go there.
"It's a movie house for kids," Ronnie Wolfspit, or some other older kid, would say. "They have all great movies, and it's all kids in the audience. And—get this—in the lobby, the lights are made out of real wagon wheels, off a covered wagon, with bulbs attached! And they give away free comic books!"
The deal was, if you'd leave, they gave you free comic books—not brand-new ones, old ones with the covers torn off. They were necessary because kids would watch the movies and stay and watch them again. We all had lunches with us, so there was no reason to leave. Sometimes a mother, or older sister, would come looking for a kid, and walk up and down the aisle, hollering for him. Naturally the kids in the audience would holler too. There was a fair amount of hollering at the Julian—also wrestling, and throwing things, and spitting down from the balcony.
This was a typical program at the Julian: A Hoot Gibson Western and another Western with Tom Mix, or Lash La Rue. A third feature, maybe Sabu in The Elephant Boy, or some other good picture. Five cartoons. Two serials, which are movies broken up into episodes—there is an episode each week. In the beginning, it says, "In our last episode," and they show a little of what happened, so you can catch up if you missed it. In the end, it always looks like Flash Gordon, or Superman, or whatever cowboy, is going to get burned to death, or crushed, or fall from a cliff—and that's where it ends. Until the next episode.
After seeing everything twice, we would leave with our free comic books, imitating Ming the Merciless, Emperor of the Universe, who was Flash Gordon's archenemy. Ming was really evil, and an archenemy is worse than a regular one.
CHAPTER 4
Dinner in the Diner
Bells! Ding-ding-dong! Someone was going along the corridor playing a little xylophone. That's how they tell you it's dinnertime on the train. Then there was a knock on the door of our double drawing room. It was Mr. Frederick.
"Dinner is served in the dining car, Mr. Wentworthstein," he said to my father. "Shall I reserve a table for you in, say, an hour?"
"I don't want a whole big meal," Eloise said. "I'm dieting. Can't I just stay here and read my book?"
"I can bring the young lady a light meal," Mr. Frederick said. "Some clear soup? A small salad? A chicken sandwich? Skim milk?"
"Oh, that sounds nice!" Eloise said.
Eloise was deep into her fantasy that she was not related to us and was traveling alone. While we were in the dining car, she would sit with the parakeets and pretend she was someone in a movie.
She was missing a lot. An hour later, just after the train had crossed the Mississippi River and passed from Illinois into Iowa, we arrived in the dining car, my mother and father and me. It was the fanciest restaurant I had ever seen! The guy who meets you and shows you to your table was wearing a tuxedo. The waiters, more elegant black guys, had the whitest, crispest uniforms and aprons. The tablecloths were crisp and white too. The silverware was heavy, and it gleamed. So did the plates and glasses. Everything rattled and tinkled as the train rumbled along, but in a sort of classy and elegant way.
Our waiter was Charles. He was smooth. He was sharp. Just watching him put a plate on the table, you knew that he knew everything about food and being a waiter. If you wanted more ice water, he would be pouring it into your glass at just the moment you first knew you wanted it—and the way he poured it was perfect. It was impossible to imagine he might spill water, no matter how much the train rocked—but if he had, I'm sure he would have done it in a way that made you happy you were there to see it.
The way you order your meal on the train is to mark what you want on a card, then give it to the waiter.
This is what we ordered: Native Mountain Trout Sauté with Bacon ($2.75)—that was my mother's. The Broiler Special: Cup of Soup, Broiled Sirloin Steak, French Fried Potatoes, Fresh Vegetable, Sliced Tomato Salad with French Dressing, Choice of Dessert, Hot Rolls,
Coffee, Tea, or Milk ($4.75)—that was my father's. Fried Spring Chicken, Southern Style ($2.20)—that was mine. The trout and the chicken came with the little cups of soup, and the hot rolls, and all those things, only my mother had potatoes au gratin and I had mashed.
There were four chairs at each table, and just the three of us, so Charles put someone else at our table with us. This is how they do things on trains.
"May this gentleman join you?" Charles asked my father.
"Certainly," my father said, and to the gentleman, "Please sit down."
My father had traveled on trains a lot in the shoelace business, and he knew all about them. Some of the porters and waiters and conductors knew him and greeted him by name. He knew there was a barbershop on the Super Chief, and he planned to get a haircut during the trip, and said I could have one too. He liked to sit in the lounge car at the very end of the train and write postcards, and he knew there was a little door in the wall of the drawing room where you could put your shoes—and during the night, someone would open another little door on the other side and take your shoes away and shine them for you.
So my father half stood up and gestured at the empty chair with his hand. Charles pulled the chair out and the gentleman sat down.
"I am Colonel Ken Krenwinkle," the gentleman said. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance."
Colonel Ken Krenwinkle had long silver hair and a droopy silver mustache. For a necktie he wore a Wentworthstein extra-wide shoelace, Model #174, Royal Blue, tied in a bow. He ordered the Golden Omelette with Fruit Macédoine ($1.70), saltine crackers, and a cup of Postum coffee substitute.
"No bread before bed, that's my motto," Colonel Ken Krenwinkle said.
The colonel had twinkling blue eyes. He was on his way from Rochester, New York, where he owned the largest used-car lot in New York State, to the West, where he had spent his boyhood.
"I knew the West in the days when the great buffalo herds still roamed the plains," Colonel Ken Krenwinkle said. "I knew the great men, the cowboys and gunfighters, the lawmen, and the great Indians. I knew Bat Masterson, and Wyatt Earp, and Sitting Bull.
"You know, young man," he said to me, "the Super Chief follows a route that existed centuries before there were trains. We are riding in comfort along a trail first traveled by the red men, then the Spanish conquistadors and the fur trappers.
"My own father and mother came west along the Santa Fe Trail in a Conestoga wagon—a prairie schooner. Thousands of people, caravans of pack mules, stagecoaches, farmers looking for land and prospectors looking for gold—they all came this way.
"The Super Chief travels only twenty miles in the great state of Iowa, and the city of Fort Madison is its only stop. The actual fort was built in 1808 to protect the settlers from raids by the Indians. The fort was attacked many times during the War of 1812. Finally the American soldiers burned their own fort in 1813 to divert warring Indians. The settlers escaped through a tunnel and made their way by boat down the river."
Up to now, I had been enjoying looking out the train windows into the night. Once in a while we'd rumble through a town, or past a farmhouse with the lights on. I could get a glimpse into the windows sometimes, and see families sitting at the table, or see people going about their business in the streets of the towns. But listening to Colonel Ken Krenwinkle talk made me squint my eyes and peer into the darkness.
"Kansas City in a couple of hours," the colonel was saying. "The official starting point of the old Santa Fe Trail. Bat Masterson and Wild Bill Hickok came through here, as did my dear mammy and pappy. Once we pull out of Kansas City, we'll be in the real West."
Colonel Ken Krenwinkle talked on and on, and asked my father questions about his travels, and the shoelace business. Naturally, Colonel Ken Krenwinkle had eaten in the Brown Derby lots of times, and knew movie stars like Tom Mix and Tim McCoy. At the end of the meal, the colonel and my father ordered Havana cigars and went off to the lounge car to talk more. Before they left, the colonel put his hand on my shoulder and said, "It is impossible for a boy with his wits about him to travel the Santa Fe Trail without discovering something. You're a boy with his wits about him, and you'll probably find a treasure along the way. If you should meet a Navajo shaman named Melvin, you'll be in luck, so keep your eyes open."
CHAPTER 5
Along the Santa Fe Trail
I kept my eyes open much of the night. My fold-down bed was next to the window, and while the rest of the family, and the parakeets, were sleeping, I could peel back the thick cloth window shade and peer out the corner. I watched the shadows of trees flash past the train. I saw sleepy towns and crossroads. Sometimes we'd pull into a station, and I watched railroad guys and passengers. But mostly I was thinking about things Colonel Ken Krenwinkle had said. I was imagining, and could almost see, Indians in war paint, riding horses, and cowboys on a cattle drive, or some sheriff shooting it out with a bad man in the streets of Dodge City, where we were going to arrive at six A.M. Clouds lit by the moon looked to me like covered wagons on the Santa Fe Trail.
When I finally got to sleep, I dreamed about a Navajo shaman—and I didn't know what that was—named Melvin who was going to somehow get me started on some fantastic adventure.
Colonel Ken Krenwinkle was sitting at the next table at breakfast. Kadota Figs with Cream ($0.40), Oatmeal ($0.45), and an Individual Pot of Postum ($0.25). Eloise was with us this time, nibbling toast and sipping tea.
"Here we are in La Junta, Colorado, spelled with a 'J,' pronounced with an 'H,'" Colonel Ken Krenwinkle said to us, turning in his chair and speaking over his shoulder. "It means 'junction' in Spanish, and that's what it is—where the Santa Fe Trail meets the Cimarron Cutoff, at Bent's Fort. The mountain route was longer, but slightly less dangerous—the Cimarron saved ten days, but there was less water along the way, and more danger of attack by hostiles. Still, three-quarters of the travelers, among them my own ancestors, took it.
"See, in the distance—that's Pike's Peak, a hundred miles away. At 14,110 feet, it's the easternmost of the big peaks in the Rockies. The motto of the people heading for the Colorado gold rush in 1859 was 'Pike's Peak or Bust.'
"It was here, in my youth, that I belonged to a sort of improvised police force known as the Committee of Vigilance, and we shot it out with the Butch Cavendish gang in front of Fergussen's Mining Supplies and Delicatessen. Most of the Cavendish gang got away, including, I am chagrined to say, my uncle Slade Krenwinkle, a very bad man."
I was so excited. Colorado! Gunfights! This was better than movies at the Julian. And the country out the window was looking like the West now too! There were weird rock formations, and colors you don't see in Chicago, and silvery plants that Colonel Ken Krenwinkle told me were sagebrush.
"You were in gunfights?" I asked Colonel Ken Krenwinkle.
"Only when absolutely necessary," the colonel said. "In fact, my Indian name, when I lived with the Osage, meant, 'Only shoots when absolutely necessary.' My uncle was the black sheep of the family, and a source of embarrassment to us all. Wild Bill Hickok finally dealt with him in Tombstone, just as Uncle Slade was drawing his Colt's Navy .45 revolver, with no good intention."
After breakfast, my father and Colonel Ken Krenwinkle went to the club car to play cards with the four Marsh Brothers, who happened to be on board. I was very excited at first, thinking the colonel had said "Marx Brothers," but these were the Marshes, not the Marxes. They were sort of substitute, imitation Marx Brothers—they did the same sort of things as the Marx Brothers did in movies, only not as well. Their names were Gaucho, Harpy, Chicklet, and Gumball. I was disappointed, but I went along to watch them play pinochle with my father and the colonel. They were funny, but not all that funny. I got bored after a while, and went off to look out the windows.
CHAPTER 6
On the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe
I had only been on the Super Chief for part of a day, a night, and a morning—but it was starting to feel like I had never been anywhere else. I
knew all the porters and conductors, and waiters, and a lot of the passengers. The rumbling, rattling, and the rolling of the train had become like my breathing and my heartbeat.
Back at home, in Chicago, which seemed a long time ago, my job, if you want to put it that way, was going to school, playing with my friends, listening to Superman and Captain Midnight on the radio, reading books, seeing movies at the Julian, and sort of observing what went on in the neighborhood. On the Super Chief, my job was watching out the windows. It was an interesting job. There were times when I got sleepy—it was the movement of the train, and the fact that we were a lot higher above sea level than I had ever been—but I fought to stay awake, because I didn't dare miss anything.
About the time we left La Junta, something happened to the land, the unexpected colors and the rock formations and all. The stuff I was looking at started to make sense in a weird way. This is hard to explain, but I thought the actual land we were traveling through was telling a story. Watching it all go past the windows of the train was like reading a book, one you don't understand but one good to read just the same. There was the history story, and the stories Colonel Ken Krenwinkle told—and those were good to think about—but what I'm talking about is something about the actual rocks that can't be translated into words. One of those scientists who studies rocks, and how the earth was formed, might be able to explain it—part of it, anyway. I hope it doesn't sound too crazy to say that some of those mountains, and mesas, and towers were like ... alive. Like alive and like animals or people, with personalities, and memories, and ... well, that is the best I can do. I just knew I didn't want to miss any of it.
There were cattle too, and herds of elk, and Indian guys taking care of sheep. And the train went through people's backyards, Indian people, with outdoor dome-shaped ovens for baking bread, making pots—I didn't know. Someone pointed out to me the ruts left by the old Conestoga wagons where the trail ran alongside the rail bed. I saw a big rattlesnake coiled on a rock, and a longhorn steer that had fallen down a ravine and broken its neck. And I saw cowboys! Real ones! Those guys had a way of sitting on a horse that made it look so easy, so comfortable!