Chapter Six

Santa Fe Rails

Mike's hiking and thumbing across the desert southwest, catching rides by rez injuns in pickup trucks, and sleeping off the side of the road on Route 66 with a can o' beans and churchkey cuisine was to have the sky as a roof and no walls from horizon to horizon to pen you in and up and beat you down. The Road of Joad was a mighty fine road, some of the time but, at others, hot days, no ride days, it was Route Sixty Sucks. Lizards scattered and skittered, snakes shaked, rattled and rolled and the orange fireball engines of the Santa Fe line screamed with whistles blowin' at the top of diesel lungs across the ghost paths of pioneers.

Ruts, rails and trails, swallowed up across vast landscape waves of Houdini praries, where Hunter S. buffalo roam and the dear antelope pray as they witness the approach of the iron horse of the Santa Fe….so fey…heavy metal machismo and cast iron balls highballing and sparking as the rip across the boxcar void, prominently laid out in precise chinee opium lines with pure asian precision...precisely.

Meandering rivers with frothy mouthed foam and hidden obstructions, towering lego-like mountains of lincoln logs and paper mache stand bare, baring stoic granite witness in mute testimony to the philosopher Testicles of the coming of age of the rail age and second coming of the blaze orange Christ fireball fireboxing into the decades of diesel to come across the canvas of sand of blank chihuahua and the savvy mojave and into and across the badwaters of the valley of death with panamint hues framing the mirage of photograph like likenesses of Ansel Adams himself, self portraits really. Look, black and white ansels with the innocence of adam in the early eve.

Lesbian lizards, salamander sissies and transexual tarantula’s watch the brush strokes of Santa Fe engines blur the desert scene, past painted deserts and scared stiff petrified woods in Bogartian movies shown Martian theaters along with the haints who hang out in Harvey House on Haunted Hill. Reminding me of wild west ghosts of a smoke stack past. The pinto stands with rider astride, with reservation on the rez, as the iron beast steely dans it’s way through Indian nations and smashes the pueblos into dust and smithereens leaving only shards of acoma pottery and memories of sweet peyote dreams….

The transcon trains first transfixed, then transformed the traverse across the american-con into a transcon magical biblical tour of mystical proportions…whizzing by a passing parade of far west histoire and a peek through the curtains of a horseless future propelled by petroleum dreams and eastern schemes by schemers and dreamers with deep back east pockets.

The railroads saw rushes for gold, races to madness for land in Oklahoma, the sooner the better the sooner. “Thars gold in them thar hills. Black gold, yellow gold, one to be hoarded the other to be sold.” The infernal injuns of combustion rolling off of Detroits assemblylines proved that Hank had a hankerin’ for a’tinkerin’ with plugs, sparks and driveshafts…later day land and rail barons would follow in the two rail footsteps of the mighty Santa Fe. Two rails, two steps, two tokes, the course was now set for the auto to lay lanes down next and parallel to the rails of old Santa Fe. The House of Harvey would also follow along with Phillips 66 and reservation tricks..

The broken shards were glued back together by the tribes who rallied to the rails and now the two lanes of Route 66. Culture for sale on the cheap from the side of the road. The trains roar by but the autos stop for that special Kodak moment of a snapshot of a real live savage in a rather feminine yet, heathen headress dancing like a chicken in a pen for pennies on the dollar. Rubber tomahawks and cheap whiskey have replaced shamans with she-mans.

The trains have ejected their passenger freight from St. Loo to LA. Cattle now, freight and goods, but it was also the hobo highway for the guthries and the dustbowl tribes of the freight yards, Kerouacs brakemen and Dylans railroad men who drink your blood like wine…three legged cows and one legged men share the legacy. The car is king these days, and railroad an interesting museum piece. The indian now hides on the rez and in the Walmart.

The Petrified Forest still waits for Bogart to bestow a blessing that will never come and the old towns and old alignments vanish in a 75 m.p.h. blur. The ruts of the old Santa Fe trail are rare and few and far between, Dodge City in old rectangular Kansas is one reminder of them..but if you look out across the desert, away from the grey of the steel grey-hound you’ll see the fireball blazé of orange racing across the rails, sparking and clacking, cutting a path and slicing a swath across the land, the desert, the praries, history and against all odds..painting the desert a portrait of it’s nostalgic self…an O'Keefe relief.

CHAPTER SEVEN - SHE COMES IN COLORS