Train Story
Travels with Mother
My mother was a widow with two children, living on a railroad retirement pension.
My father was killed in an accident while working for the Great Northern Railroad
when I was just 9 months old. This accidental death provided my mother with a
pension and a railroad pass for her lifetime and until the children reached 21.
The pass was four trips on the Great Northern and one foreign pass each year.
If we went to California to visit my Grandmother, we would use one of the Great
Northern Passes out to Seattle and the foreign pass from there to Los Angeles.
She would use the other 3 passes for day trips to Minneapolis.
Day Trips
A typical day trip to Minneapolis would have us board the Empire Builder in
Grand Forks at 11:00 PM and arrive in Minneapolis in the Morning around 7:00
AM. We would then walk though the gateway area and down Nicollet to have
breakfast at the Forum Cafeteria. When the stores opened my sister and mother
would drop me off in the toy department and they would check out clothes and
what not, never buying anything. Lunch time was back at the Forum and then on
to more department stores such as Dayton's, Powers, and Donaldson's. At
supper time we would head to the Nankin to have Chinese food then back to
Nicollet to walk to the train station. Things in common with all trips was that
mother would almost never take a taxi but she would take a bus or a streetcar.
Our trip back to Grand Forks would end at midnight where we did get to have a
taxi ride home to East Grand Forks.
Other trips to Minneapolis included day trips to the Amusement parks at White
Bear Lake or at Excelsior which we reached by the streetcars. If we had time to
kill, mother would get on a city bus and ride to the end of the line then pay the
fare again and ride back to the starting point. This was her version of a
sightseeing tour. Every year beginning in 1949 we would take a trip to Los
Angeles but the route would vary. Sometimes we would go out to Seattle but we
would return through Chicago. Trip planning involved many trips to check out
books from the Grand Forks library.
The Mega-Trip
The most memorial trip was in the summer of 1952 when I was 12 and my sister
was 15. My sister really hated to go and was pretty surly about it, but she went.
Mother planned the trip of all trips to get us to California and back, this time it
covered the entire periphery of the United States. We started off heading into
Chicago where we changed trains to head to Buffalo, New York and Niagara
Falls. We saw the falls from the American side and even got to ride the little boat
called the "Maid of the Mist" to get us close to the bottom of the falling water.
Next it was off to Washington DC. All I remember about Washington was that my
mother and sister dropped me off at the Smithsonian Museum of Science and
Industry while they headed off to the Department stores to look. It seemed like
no time at all and they were back to pick me up and I was just barely starting to
see stuff.
Next it was off to New York City to see sights and stay with people. Mother had
a high school classmate, Jay Sunsdahl, who lived in New York City and we
stayed in her apartment for a couple of days while we toured. I remember seeing
the Empire State Building and taking the subway to visit Otto Hanstads sister,
Gunda who lived out by the United Nations Building. Our special eating place
was the "Automat" where you would select what you wanted to eat and deposit
the coin and open the door to remove your food item. The next leg of the trip
was to Jacksonville, Florida where we stayed with another of her classmates,
Mrs Samuel Grimes. After Jacksonville we went to Miami where we stayed in a
hotel. This was summer time so it was pretty cheap and the beaches were
available. The next leg brought us to New Orleans where we toured by bus line.
The trip across Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona was pretty uneventful except
that this was during the Korean War and there were many soldiers heading from
El Passo to San Diego. I was introduced to hot Tamales wrapped in corn husks
being sold by vendors outside of the train at El Passo.
Our return to Grand Forks was pretty basic, Los Angeles to Seattle. Scenery in
Northern California and Oregon was beautiful especially from the vestibule
between the cars. Somehow a kid was allowed to stand by the open window and
look all he wanted. The Great Northern Empire Builder passed though some
beautiful territory in Idaho and Montana. We would get one turn eating in the
dinning car on each trip and the area around Glacier Park had the best fish.
Standing in the Vestibule in Montana was special as well.
We spent the entire summer traveling seeing the great cities and landmarks of
the United States. I have no idea which railroads we traveled on but I don't think
there was a train that I wasn't on.