Martin - Chasing Fireflies

For my Dad nothing compares

ocketing through the hazy orange glow of dawn, the green 11972 four-door Chevrolet Impala fishtailed sideways off the dirt road onto Highway 99, squealing both rear tires and billowing white smoke from bald retreads. The exhaust pipe spewed sparks some six feet beyond the bumper, and the tip of the pipe glowed cigarettered. The engine whined, backfiring out the hole in the muffler, and then the car straightened and sped down the mile-long straightaway that paralleled the tracks. The left rear brake light was busted, and the front windshield was an indiscriminate spiderweb of cracks stretching from hood to rooftop.

A mile down the road, the speedometer bounced above ninety miles an hour, but it was a good thirty or forty off. Another quarter mile and the driver hit the brakes with both feet pressing the pedal to the carpet. Swerving from median to pavement to emergency lane and back again, the car moved like an untied balloon that had slipped from a clown's fingers. At the end of two long black lines, the driver threw the stick into reverse and gunned the small-block 400, producing more white smoke from both the rear wheel wells and the right exhaust pipe. Without signaling, the car U-turned, swung wide, and the driver pegged the accelerator.

The kid in the passenger seat stared into the side mirror, squinting so that his eyelashes touched, and studied the spray of sparks. If he closed them just right, the exhaust pipe comet transformed into a fanciful fountain of fireflies dancing along the South Georgia asphalt.

The car reached the railroad crossing in the wrong lane, finally swerving into the turn lane only to power-slide into the wrong lane again. The fountain disappeared. Steam rose from underneath the hood, swirling up and around the bulldog hood ornament. The cloth headliner had partially fallen from the ceiling and now flapped in the crosswind like a tent. All four windows were down, and only jagged corners remained of the back glass. The car sat smoking, just inches from the tracks.

These historic tracks.

The Silver Meteor was a speeding silver bullet placed into service in February 1932. Before the Second World War, boys would appear out of the woods, flag her down, and ride north to New York, where they'd hop on a steamer, float the ocean, and shoot at Germans. Her Mars lamp created a figure eight, sweeping the tracks ahead and keeping rhythm with the chatter of the telegraph at every stop. Airconditioned in 1936, diesel powered, with reclining seats, a diner, tavern-coach, and coach-observation car, she was a modern marvel. With her all-stainless steel streamlined luxury coaches, Pullman sleepers, and white-coated porters opening doors and placing step-boxes on the platform, she was also a gateway to the world.

In her heyday from 1956 onward, she departed New York at 2:50 PM, arriving in D.C. some three and a half hours later, then promptly departed again at 7:05 en route to a 4:00 PM arrival in Miami the following day. That put her through Thalmann, a few miles west of the green Impala, sometime in the early morning.

Prior to every crossing, the conductor would check his Hamilton, gauge the time, and hang on the horn. But it wasn't always necessary. Sometimes it was just bragging. Then again, not many people had his job.

Normally, the Silver Meteor carried twenty cars and traveled between seventy-four and ninety miles per hour, meaning she would need all of five miles to stop. After she left Thalmann, she'd turn south, hug the Georgia coastline, streak into Florida, and top a hundred miles per hour on the straights between Sebring and West Palm Beach. She was a symphony of sound and a king's banquet of smell, feel, and otherworldly power. Her domed observation car would round the corner and sparkle in the distance like the Northern Star. A minute later, the caboose would reach and clear the corner, only to disappear once again behind her nose.

Barreling down the straight, the bone jarring horn would sound every quarter mile and then constantly in the last quarter. As she neared the crossing, she sent an odd combination of sonar pingsthe banging of the draft gear between the cars, the thundering engines, bells ringing, horn blowing, sparks flying in her wake. She was a panoramic display of clickety-clack glory, the sum of which reached out ahead of the train only to sneak around and rise up through your spine like a jackhammer exiting the earth. And when she had disappeared, her single red light tailing off into the distance, she left you with that same lover's touch, the lingering remnant and sweet aroma of spent diesel, hot oil, and creosote.