Swallowing the Sun; travels with the Shawnee Prophet

“Let’s go to Ohio!” I say enthusiastically to bike group pals who stare back at me, perplexed. From their faces I can see this is a tough sell, an eight hour drive from the Washington DC area to a state better known for corn, chili on spaghetti and hillbilly elegies. Southwest Ohio is not often found on many travel destination lists but the stars are aligning and I believe this is Ohio’s year.

Our bike group plans several outings but this year I hope to combine our trip with the April 8, 2024 solar eclipse. Our group of 10 includes bikers of varying skill levels, from people who think nothing of weekend C&O canal rides to Pittsburgh and back, to bikers like me who idle through towns with several pit stops for antiquing and snacks. The early April timing means we may encounter a bit of slush and mud, but my bike group is tough and I hope they’ll trust me. I have a solid itinerary to bike through Native American history, past haunted hotels and a serpent swallowing the sun, all pointing us in the direction of a total solar eclipse.

My ultimate plan is to get my bike group to converge on my hometown of Greenville Ohio, population 12,715, which sits once more in the eclipse’s path of totality. It is best known as the birthplace of Annie Oakley and Lowell Thomas, but it is another native son who invites me to witness a redux of an eclipse he predicted in 1806, the Shawnee Prophet Tenskwatawa. To learn more of our spiritual host we need to hop on our bikes and ride a mere six miles from our homes in suburban Maryland to The National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC

The Prophet Tenskwatawa, by Henry Inman

There he is, eyeing us suspiciously from a stairwell in the Portrail Gallery. Born Lalawéthika, he was saddled early on with unfavorable comparisons to his handsome warrior brother, Tecumseh. He was unathletic, bad at hunting and drank to excess. His eye injury is said to be a self inflicted accident with his own arrows. After a stupendous whisky bender he collapsed and appeared dead, but while being prepped for burial he sat up and spoke of a vision from the Great Spirit who told him to clean up his act. From then on he gave up alcohol and western ways, called himself Tenskwatawa, the “Open Door,” or the Prophet, and set out with his brother to unify the native tribes against the encroaching white settlers and soldiers, aka “the children of the evil spirit.”

Also in the Portrait Gallery is the one-ton marble sculpture, “The Dying Tecumseh.” Not a single verifiable image of Tecumseh exists today so this statue is at best a metaphor for the matrydom of native peoples and at its worst, sitting as it originally did in the US capitol from 1864 to 1878, a gloaty reminder of the inevitable Manifest Destiny.

The Dying Tecumseh by Friedrich August Fedinand Pettich, in the National American Art Museum

But westward we must go, as I convince my friends to pack up their bikes and start out our journey on US route 68 through West Virginia. I suggest we break the trip in two with a stop in Marrietta Ohio, the only US town to be named in honor of Marie Antoinette. After reading the historical plaque that tells of the 1825 visit of the Marquis de Lafayette and after we check into the hotel that bears his name, we can bike along the Ohio River, then cross the Muskingum River and head into the Harmon Hill neighborhood with its historically preserved 19th century Federal and Gothic Revival homes, and indulge in some excellent carbs at Spagna’s Italian restaurant. Then we bike back to the Lafayette Hotel to see which of us lucks into a visitation from the ghost of a former general manager, an irritated man who rattles knobs and slams doors.

Day Two we combine our themes of astronomical alignment and native history with a visit to Ohio’s many prehistoric earthwork mounds. The reasons for the mounds are a mystery, part burial sites or gathering place for ceremonies. Marietta has a Great Mound, probably created by the prehistorical Adena people, now surrounded by the graves of the former Revolutionary War soldiers and families that settled here back when LaFayette came a callin’. There are hundreds of mound sites in Ohio and possibly many more that were plowed over to become corn fields. But for this solar eclipse trip it’s necessary to visit the site most likely used as a celestial calendar: The Great Serpent Mound, two hours west of Marietta, in Peebles Ohio.

Aerial view of the Great Serpent Mound. Photo Credit- http://ohiowins.com/great-serpent-mound/

The 1,300 foot long earthen coiled serpent swallowing an egg or possibly the sun, is a lovely if eerie sight, but even more impressive is learning how the curves line up with the sun and moon rises at the solstices and equinoxes, creating a wonderfully accurate lunar calendar. There will no doubt be crowds here before the solar eclipse; it fills up at every celestial event with new age tourists communing with the spirit world or with the “Ancient Aliens” fans who believe the near by meteor crater is actually a UFO landing site (and that aliens built the whole thing). Possibly also in attendance will be some of the Oklahoma Shawnee who feel responsible for protecting their ancestor’s work and who have grown weary of the party atmosphere around what they consider a sacred site. To get a feel for just how much Shawnee patience has been tested, the Columbus Dispatch reported a 2012 story of a New Age cult determined to reignite the chi of the sleeping serpent by burying homemade “orgonites” - discs made by pouring melted wax mixed with tin foil and crystals into muffin tins. No one knows how many discs they buried in the mound before they were stopped. But it is worth joining the throng, respectfully - this isn’t the Harmonic Convergence for heaven’s sake - to marvel at an ancient wonder currently under consideration to join the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

Our biking trip can begin a little over an hour north in Xenia Ohio where we can pick up a middle section of the state long Ohio to Erie bike trail. From here the serious members of our bike trip can either cruise 68.3 miles south to Cincinnati or the 57.9 mile northern route to Columbus Ohio. The Ohio to the Erie trail is a combination of paved, crushed stone paths and surface roads and their website includes interactive maps with trail alerts.

An alternate plan for the wimpier bike members of the group is an afternoon ride around what may be Ohio’s most adorable town, Yellow Springs, home of Antioch College, old school liberalism, head shops and some amazing restaurants like the Winds Cafe with it's impressive wine list and farm to table cuisine or Ye Olde Tavern for proper German sausages. Before or after we eat, we should lock up the bikes and head on foot down the steep paths to the Glen Helen Nature preserve to see the gorges and discuss whether or not the underground iron ore turned the titular spring yellow or orange.

photo from yellowsprings.org

But we’re still not in the path of totality yet so it’s time to pack the bikes and drive another hour west, to Darke County. In 1806 this was the western edge of American itself, part of the land lost to the Shawnee at 1795 Treaty of Greenville. When Tecumseh rode south to rally other tribes to the cause of unification, Tenskwatawa headed to Greenville to open a spiritual site for his followers. The fact that he set up camp just inside US territory was probably a distinct middle finger aimed at the powers that be and it certainly unnerved white settlers who eyed the growing throng suspiciously. Upset too was William Henry Harrison, then Governor of the Indiana Territories who felt it was high time to bust up the popularity of Tecumseh and his Prophet brother. So in April of 1806, Harrison wrote a letter to the chiefs of the neighboring Delaware tribes:

“But who is this pretended prophet who dares to speak in the name of the Great Creator? Examine him…If he is really a prophet, ask of him to cause the sun to stand still, the moon to alter it’s course, the rivers to cease to flow or the dead to rise for their graves. If he does these things, you may then believe that he has been sent from God.”

Tenskwatawa rose to the challenge and told his followers:

"Fifty days from this day there will be no cloud in the sky. Yet, when the Sun has reached its highest point, at that moment will the Great Spirit take it into her hand and hide it from us. The darkness of night will thereupon cover us and the stars will shine round about us. The birds will roost and the night creatures will awaken and stir."

Fifty days later was the total solar eclipse of June 16, 1806 and Harrison’s bit of subterfuge backfired as more tribal members aligned with Tecumseh and the Prophet.

Darke County Parks has recently completed a 15 mile Tecumseh Trail, a mixed-use hiking/biking paths winding through corn fields from Greenville to Gettysburg Ohio, so I may send my more enthusiastic bike pals out on that. Meanwhile I propose a shorter ride through this All American town. We can start at the Darke County Fair Grounds where we can pick up a picnic lunch of surprisingly good fried chicken and pickled beets and eggs, maybe a bag of frozen pea as well, at the near by IGA grocery store, then head to the Greenville City Park to see the remains of Fort Greenville, eat our lunch in the outdoor amphitheater and feed the frozen peas to the peacocks and ducks. On the way we’ll cruise down Broadway, past the statue of Annie Oakley and dozens of vibrant small businesses, coffee shops, bars and restaurants. After the park we can head to the Garst Museum to learn more about life in early Ohio and bone up on all things Annie Oakley. Hungry carnivores can then can stop by the Maid Rite for loose-beef burgers (kind of like a White Castle but also not quite), the vegetarians can enjoy egg salad and Mike Sell’s potato chips, while everyone gets a super thick milk shake. Will my East Coast friends be amazed or repulsed by Maid Rite’s “wall of gum?” We shall see.

Generations worth of gum stuck to the wall of the Maid Rite restaurant in Greenville Ohio

Then off to the Shawnee Prairie Preserve where we can come as close as possible to Tenskwatawa’s camp and soak up the spirit of the Shawnee brothers and their last ditch effort to save their land. As a direct descendant of the “children of the evil spirit,” it will be my chance to beg forgiveness and also to thank Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa for their enduring inspiration.

As for the day of the eclipse itself, I recommend everyone come out to my Mom’s house and go stand in the cornfield out back. We should have a clear view, as long as the second cloudiest state in the nation breaks with tradition and gives us a thoroughly blue sky.  If we’re lucky, maybe the Prophet will ask the Great Spirit to take the sun in her hand and impress us all once again.

Neil Karn, Paperboy of the Year

We said goodbye to my uncle Neil earlier this month. He was my dad’s younger brother and if you ask me to go to my “Happy Place,” I would be at my grandmother’s kitchen table in Greenville Ohio, past my bed time, listening to my mom, my dad, his brothers Jack and Neil and grandpa yuck it up as they played poker, while my grandmother, pretending not to laugh, would call them all “morons.” I didn’t understand the game, didn’t get the jokes and didn’t care. I was surrounded by happy humans who were happy to have me around. I was happy to be a moron right along with them.

Uncle Neil had struggled for the past year with a cruel combination of Lymphoma, Parkinson’s and other conditions that chipped away at his memory. But not his sense of humor for mere disease and age could never touch that. This was the man who could make your face muscles ache from smiling after a brief chat, the Uncle who took my brother and me to see Monty Python’s The Holy Grail and made the entire row of theater seats shake with his uproarious laughter. Sure, everyone in the theater was laughing, but I worried that Uncle Neil’s head would pop off. His joy was unbridled, it was infectious. He held his sides and practically rolled in the aisles, he enjoyed it so much. “Just fabulous,” he’d say about everything that delighted him and I’m sure that was how he felt when he married Donna Highfill, a feisty parson’s daughter whose wicked sense of humor could go toe to toe with his own.

Clearly he was a treat to us and everyone he met, so it’s not a surprise he had a long career of managing and motivating people in the Virginia Division of Volunteerism and later in the Richmond corporate banking world. Other than that I knew little; something about winning an award, maybe a trip abroad when he was young? While researching for his obituary I decided to search the Dayton Daily News archives. It was there that I found not only my fabulous uncle in a series of fabulous feature articles but also a glimpse of what home town newspapers used to be.

The Goofball in the above article is uncle Neil himself, winner of the 1962 Paperboy of the Year Award. Gee whiz, but this prize comes with a trip to Spain! By golly, Neil is in his Freshman year of Spanish, so surely he’ll do just fine! Gosh, that kid is off to great things and life is swell!

(That vibration I feel in the chair next to me, I’m sure, is the ghost of my uncle shaking with laughter as I write this)

But the Dayton Daily News didn’t stop there. No siree.

Look at that action shot! The anticipation for this trip was as palpable as the news day was slow and yet there was more!

Uncle Neil meets with the Mayor of Greenville to go over diplomatic gift giving

He met with the mayor! He discussed strategic uniform diplomacy! This was no mere pleasure cruise which we all learn about because the Dayton Daily News wrote even MORE:

Neil “bubbles…”

Omg, “Neil bubbles…” did this reporter have any clue about the years of torment he would endure from his brothers for that head line? Whatever, it was a “fabulous” trip where Neil went to a bull fight, saw tanks battle with Communist rioters in the street of Lisbon, met the future King of Spain and most importantly Zsa Zsa Gabor. My mind boggles at how all of this could have happened to a 14 year-old (and clearly the editorial staff at the DDN was gobsmacked as well) but it was 1962 and life truly was fabulous. I still have that apron, by the way, in the box of old dress up cloths for the kids.

Okay, but wait, seriously. There’s more.

Announcing his bid for presidency in 1996

Here he is two years later, announcing his future campaign for President in 1996. Or was he? Did he just make a joke and the DDN editor overheard it and shouted “stop the presses!!” Again my mind boggles; how did this even make the news? With all this kid glove coverage, you’d expect my uncle was the editor’s son or possibly a reporter have a crush on him. This newspaper could not get enough of my uncle, but then, a lot of people felt that way.

It’s a shame that my 21st century mind is baffled by all this media good will and encouragement. Here on the same page as my Uncle’s “presidential bid” is a story about the area’s first woman bus driver (“the kids say she’s okay!”) and an octagenerian melon farmer who traps varmits. These stories are hardly worth the ink used to print them and yet the sweet subtext is brimming with community pride. It seems weird by our standards today where we expect divisive comments; there is no angry push back from PETA activists trying to free the trapped muskrats, there are no trolls insisting that this so-called bus driver stay home and be a “trad wife,” no one in the on-line peanut gallery is calling my uncle a “libtard” (or worse) for thinking of a presidential bid. Imagine this for a second; there once was a time that community news was just presented at face value and, one imagines, Miami Valley residents read these articles and thought “oh, that’s nice,” or “I know her,” or “that reminds me, I need to buy a melon,” and, most likely, “that Neil…what will he get up to next?”

I’m sure this kind of wholesome news coverage has it’s share of detractors, (they are writing outraged comments to this article this very minute so we’ll know soon enough!), but it also reminds me that my uncle grew up in a media environment where adults made it clear that ordinary members of the community mattered, everyone from the mayor to the bus drivers to the paper boys. Is it any coincidence that later in life my uncle’s career focused on fighting the War on Poverty, on getting proper funding for community volunteer organizations and on working with coal miner’s wives and widows to get their hand made quilts in fashion magazines and into stores in Beverly Hills and 5th Avenue. He believed that ordinary people mattered, that their efforts deserved a day in the sun. I can’t help but think he got that idea from his local newspaper.

If he were here today, I think Neil would thank the DDN for the effusive coverage and apologize for disappointing them in 1996. “Maybe in 2024,” he’d quip and the editors would leap into action, I imagine. Then he’d positively “bubble,” that all of this and his life in it’s entirety was all “just fabulous.” And then he’d laugh and, I promise, you’d laugh right along with him.

malheursement, je reviens

Well I’m back from my Mercury Retrograde travel and the only mishap, screw up or crossed wire that I can see is that I’m back. Here I am, not in Paris. Happy to be home, sure, but…man. Not. In. Paris. Hard to wrap the head around. I mean, who will bring me my afternoon goûter? Where is my big bowl of café au lait? Where are the parks filled with naked cherub statues and palaces designed by the Medicis, and the péntaque courts and the pelouse that is always interdit and the people lounging and loving life like it was their birth right? Why am I here and not there? Qu’est que c’est passé?

Not whining, just confused. Like I’ve walked out of a mirage. I had it there in my hands, a sweet slice of cultural ambrosia where you could sit all day in a café next to human beings so polished it is possible they were super models, while French conversations swirled around like bird song and down the street someone, I swear to Dieu, played an accordion. Very discombobulating to have all that evaporate on a plane ride home in Bozo-class. Very Mercury retrograde.

But now that I am no longer jet lagged, I think I can find the will to look through my many, many, possibly too many, photos and share them with you. Just know that it is killing me to post them. Hope you can live with yourselves.

Okay, ugh. Here is a shot from the Tuilleries. So stinking gorgeous. These dahlias were ginormous and not only that, get this - the garden beds of the Tuilleries were specially designed this season to color coordinate with a Caravaggio painting. I mean, who even does that? The French, of course. The Tuilleries gardens featured dark brooding botanicals; deep burgundy, almost black, Canna leaves and electric pops of vermillion Castor Bean plants and those stunning deep orange Dahlias, all to remind us of the dark drama found in the tableau “La Mort de la Vierge.” Breathtaking is an understatement and that’s what they were going for. I guess if Parfums Christian Dior were going to fund my garden, I too would take pains to honor a master. Which one, tho? Van Gogh, perhaps? That might be too easy given his sunflower kick, and we’ll see more of Monsieur Van Gogh later. I’ll have to think on it. But in the meantime, look at the size of those Alstromeria, merrily growing like bushes. Not the basic grocery store item at all but something far more magnifique.

Then we made the mistake of going to Le Jardin des Plantes. My son, a little underwhelmed, asked, “does that just mean “Plant Garden?” And yes, that is the translation but French horticulturalists could never, ever, be so basic. Le Jardin des Plantes is like someone took the Smithsonian Natural History Museum and the Zoo and plopped them into the National Arboretum and then made all of them better. And then because all that was simply not enough, they filled the beds with a breath taking array of Dahlias. I’d still be there if my husband had not hustled me out the gate with the promise of an afternoon patisserie. I wish I hadn’t fallen for that.

Finally there were the ordinary every day gardens that we passed, all with precise color palettes and zero weeds. At the marchés, there were buckets of locally grown flowers at very decent prices. Another reason not to come home. And yet I did. Quelle bêtise.

In between the jardins and the fleurs, there were patisseries, parks, museums and la vie bohème. Now there is laundry and weeding.

Hope you’re happy, Mercury.

Mercury Retrograde Travelogue

Hello Flower Friends…I’m setting down the flower shears and picking up a pen and a passport. Let’s see what happens…

then and now

I like how the new anti- counterfeit tech washes out three decades of wrinkles

I mean, I hope I’ll be traveling soon. Life events are conspiring lately to squash my naive dreams of visiting Europe of eating a baguette sandwich in La Jardin des Plantes and then hoisting beers the size of my torso in Munich. It has been 34 years since I set foot on the Europe and joy should be unconfin’d. I should be buying luggage clothing cubes and electrical adaptors. But not so fast, suddenly there are numerous home fires keeping me as busy as an an overworked Smokey the Bear. But then, just as suddenly, things start to calm down. I start to see glimmers of hope that the timing is okay, family members are okay, our passports are here and appear to be okay. “Whew,” I say, as I examine my Luftansa airline booking. It’s then that I noticed the dumbest thing.

Everyone, everywhere, even the Today Show, knows

Mercury retrograde starts August 23

Our flight departs on August 23, 2023. Seems innocuous but no. This is the first day of the Mercury retrograde. Incroyable! Dumkopf! Quelle idiot! How could I, of all people, make this rookie mistake?

I have been an astrology nerd since the days of Linda Goodman and the seductive flattery of her popular 1968 book Sun Signs (“Libra - your smile can melt a Hershey bar at 100 paces…”). Now in the midst of an online astro renaissance, it seems everyone has at least heard of a Mercury retrograde. Even the skeptics who stopped reading this post the moment I wrote the word “astrology,” know not to book travel at the start of one. But petit imbécile that I am, I did.

So I’m not in a confident head space right not, let’s just say. My fantasy trip, ruined because it’s August 23. It’s stupid, I know, I know. And truly I do know because I myself was born under a Mercury retrograde. Whether or not it’s a real thing, my life time has had all the Mercury retrograde signatures of bumpy travel, upended plans, miscommunications and do-overs, over and over again.

To get out of this funk, I breathe deep and tell myself: “this simply means more of the same nonsense I’ve lived with my entire life. How bad can this be?” So now, instead of worrying about a future I can not predict no matter how astrology YouTubers I subscribe to, I am now going to review a lifetime of travel travails that I somehow survived. And frankly, looking back on a long history of travel mishegoss and shenanigans, it appears I was born for this.

Here then is a montage of times St. Christopher himself had to work overtime to keep me bobbing like a cork through foreign terrains where I encountered train fugitives, atmospheric rivers, human stampedes and daylight monkey robberies:

my boyfriend now husband on a hike in the Monkey Forest. There are peanuts in his backpack. Don’t tell the monkeys.

Ubud, Bali - My boy friend and I set off for a hike in the Monkey Forest. We were on our way to a temple, I think, but the main mission was to see cute! monkeys for sure, I mean we brought a bag of peanuts with us because how cute! will it be when they eat out of our hands, right? They seemed to be waiting for us at the start of the trail; one lone monkey (as predicted, cute!) and then a Momma and Baby monkey (omg, cute x 2!).

I swear for a hot second

this was super cute

Then, pretty quickly we were surrounded by a highly organized gang of cute! monkeys who grew less cute! the closer they got. Goodness, but monkeys have sharp teeth! I had not noticed that before. One cute! guy in particular made it clear, showing off his shiny incisors, that they didn’t want one peanut, they wanted the whole bag. My boyfriend and I tossed the bag back and forth to keep it away from them as we walked along the trail. The entourage of monkeys trailing us grew into a little macaque mob and still this was cute! until, en mass, they leaped on him, pulled his hair, scratched his face and shirt. Thinking fast, he threw the bag into the forest and they dove after it. After some scrambling they found the bag and held it aloft as they ran off, making proud monkey noises. That part was, at least, cute!

They Walk Fast in New York

My Baby and me at the Chelsea Hotel

New York City - wait…which weird NYC story did I want to tell..? they are innumerable as any New Yorker will tell you. That city does mess with you. But another time I’ll share the living weird in NYC stories. This is a travel weird in NYC story. Here goes: so I was on the Bowery walking to McSorley’s pub to meet my husband for a beer. It had been a fun little work/vacation week but now we had just enough time for a drink and dinner before we caught an evening train home to DC. The phone rang and I heard the voice of my youngest child, my Baby, who we had sent home on a bus earlier that week. He was 17, plenty old enough to be home alone for a few nights, right?

“Mom…Mom…?” he said, not sounding at all right. “Mom…where? where’s my bike? I can’t find my bike Mom…” He started to cry. The phone was wrestled away from him and an adult voice informed me that they found my son lying on the street in front of their house, his bike mangled. He was clearly concussed, his arm was maybe broken. I better come get him.

No, I can’t come, I tell this Good Samaritan, I’m in New York and it’s almost Happy Hour. Well, I didn’t say that exactly but I felt like Worst Mother of 2017 when I told him I wasn’t home but that I would send someone. I made calls to my oldest Darling Boy who was at university not too far away and to my Saintly Neighbor and together they got My Baby to the hospital while I ran to the pub, smacked the beer out of my husband’s hand and cried “we are leaving now.”

After an excruciatingly slow taxi cab to Penn Station, we raced to the ticket window where we asked to get on an earlier train. Thank God! There was one leaving in 10 minutes. Just enough time to get some dinner. The food court was on the other side of a glass walled waiting area and as we scanned the counter at Zaro’s for dinner options, we heard a metallic crack! in the distance. I turned to see every single person in the waiting area drop to the ground. Parents threw themselves on their children. Then the unbelievable and unforgettable sound of thousands of feet as everyone in the world started running directly at us.

In the wave of humanity I lost my husband and found myself hiding behind some young traveler and his large back pack. Ashamed that I was using this poor kid as a shield, I forced myself into the center of Penn Station, convinced I was now a target, my brain short circuiting, my body bracing for a bullet, when my husband reappeared and grabbed my arm. We headed to the Madison Ave exit, stepping over abandoned suitcases, cell phones and spilled Jamba Juice as building employees slammed shut store-front iron gates and went into lock down.

We made it outside and sat on the curb to hyperventilate. Pretty soon I noticed a strange normality all around us. New Yorkers rushed by in their usual “more important places to be” mode. Groups of NY Nicks fans in jerseys merrily waltzed towards the arena. Cops in full riot gear and rifles suddenly appeared, but instead of racing inside, they stopped on the sidewalk, looked at the Penn Station entrance, looked at each other and then shrugged. I tried to ask the cop what happened but I was still out of breath. The cops left. We looked at our watches. Our train was leaving in 5 minutes. We picked up our things and ran back inside.

On the train all the passengers in our car became fast friends and frazzled compatriots. “What the hell was that?” we asked each other in unison. “Where the hell is the bar car?” We all needed a drink. As we sipped watery Amtrak cocktails we checked social media together and pieced together what happened. Cops on the tracks tried to subdue an unruly passenger and the taser (what? a taser? why?!) malfunctioned and went off like the sound of a gun. The crowd reacted the way every American has to react in this God awful video game we now live in: Tag! It’s the newest mass shooter event and you are it!

Safe on the train headed towards home we knew we were not it, thank God, but the adrenaline surging through our bodies did not know, so it took hours to calm down. We pulled our heads together as we enter Union Station, then hopped into a cab to get home to deal with that other crisis.

My Baby, who got out of NYC just in time to go dancing with a speed bump. He’s fine now and has cool scars to show off. Thanks to Neighborhood Saint Anne and his Big Brother who dropped everything to get him to the hospital.

Standing on the corner of Benson Arizona

okay, where was I this time…yes, on the Amtrak from Tucson, Arizona. My last trip before the start of Covid just a few months later. Foot loose and fancy free like people were back then, I took time off to visit my husband who was attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, then we enjoyed ourselves in Zion and visited friends in Tucson. Dear Husband had to then fly off to Detroit for the Auto Show and I decided I would take the long way home by train. I picked up tamales and a kale salad, got on board and settled into a seat with a table in the observation car, ready for some serious western scenery.

Stop # 1 - Benson Arizona. Get comfy folks, we’ll be here a while

I went back to get my book and came back to find some Dude sitting next to my table of food. “I have to sit here,” he explained, “I get car sick if I face the other way.” I gesture to all the other chairs facing his “right way,” but he ignored me. On the other side a new passenger sat down and cracked open a beer. It was 9:45 am. I picked up my things and moved to another table and then realized my kale salad was missing. Neither Dude answered my questions about the salad. Okay, not a great start but I still have my Tamales and I’m still raring to go. Let’s get this train rolling!

The first stop after Tucson on the Sunset Express, after 45 minutes of some stellar Saguaro cactus and road runner scenery, is Benson Arizona. Tiny little one-road town with an ice cream stand next to the train station. Adorable but not much to see. The train stopped, blocking the one road in Benson so that guy in the red shirt in the photo above had to wait to cross the street. He waited and waited while we sat and sat. After an hour or so, one of my neighbors looked out the window on the other side of the train and said, “hey, does that guy’s jacket say FBI?” Now we all got up and craned out necks to look out windows. Yep, a large crowd of people in orange jackets is down by the front of the train.

Hard to see but this is a crowd of cops and Feds, all of whom are plenty bored by whatever is taking so long

Soon after, a line of passengers started coming from the front cars and into ours, filling the seats and aisles around us. They don’t know what’s happening, they tell us, but the Feds boarded the train and started banging on the door of one of the sleeper cars.” Then they evacuated all the other sleeper cars and told people to move to the back, quickly. All of our faces pressed against the glass trying to see what the hell was going on up front. I saw one Fed on the platform talking earnestly to someone through a window. Other amateur gum shoe passengers cornered conductors and cafe car staff, demanding answers. Outside in Benson, a crowd of onlookers gathered at the ice cream stand. The man in the red shirt was still waiting to cross the street.

Finally we pieced together with hearsay from the staff, rumors from other passengers and too good to check facts: a fugitive from the law, a man who had threatened a judge and his family, was being tracked by the FBI. They were pinging his cell phone, located him on the Sunset Express, then made plans to apprehend him in Benson. Meanwhile, the Fugitive, a fast thinker apparently, looked out his window in time to see the Feds lined up on the platform. He then locked the door to his sleeper car. He may or may not have a gun on him. Incredibly, Amtrak staff told the Feds they do not have keys to unlock the sleeper doors.

“Well we know this much, don’t we?” an African American passenger announces to everyone in the observation car, “we know what color he is. If he had been a brother they would shot the door down by now.”

Another hour or so later, the Feds lead a white man off the train and into a waiting police car. We roll out of Benson. The man in the red shirt is long gone. So is my kale salad. I have my suspects but I’ve had enough of mysteries for one day.

up next…skinny dipping in an atmospheric river and more!