I watched trains in real life, and I watched them on television too. My mother would schedule my dinner time around Engineer Bill’s “Cartoon Express.” Bill Stulla hosted his daily cartoon program dressed in striped bib overalls and cap as a railroad engineer. Between cartoons, he entertained his viewing audience with his model railroads, and various games. It was the only way my mother had found for coaxing me to drink milk. At some point during every program, Engineer Bill would play “Red Light Green Light” with his TV audience. While his announcer, “Freight Train Wayne,” called out signals, Engineer Bill (and, presumably, many of the kids watching from home) would drink a glass of milk together. When we heard “green light,” we lifted our glasses to our lips, stopping only when we heard “red light”…because, as Engineer Bill reminded us, “No engineer would ever run on a red light.”

Considering my early fascination with railroads, it’s not surprising that one of my first memories is a visual image from a long train ride I took with my mother. I remember standing at the train window, gazing at the passing scenery as we pulled out of New Orleans on a bright morning in early November. Viewed from our compartment as the train picked up speed, the phone wires strung on poles beside the tracks seemed to undulate gently up and down in a way that lulled and fascinated me. I remember the rows of blue glass insulators on the crossbars of the telephone poles.

I had just turned 2, and my faculty of memory was still in the formative stages. While the sum total of my memory of that lonely four-day train trip endures in a bright vision of blue glass, glinting in the morning sun, I know now that my mother remembered the shadows of many darker things.

She thought about the Negro porter, and her embarrassment after my loud exclamation our first day on the train when I cried out, “Momma, look at the chocolate man!” Her embarrassment had prompted her to upgrade our fares when we changed trains in New Orleans. The little roomette in which we rode for the rest of our trip minimized the chance I might subject her to further embarrassment with my remarks, and it offered her some privacy with her thoughts.

She thought about the black tar that she wiped from my white shoes the night we changed trains. Wanting a closer look at the trains, I had run out of the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, down the steps and onto the tracks.

She thought about her panic when I began choking on a Luden’s wild cherry cough drop as we sat in the late-night terminal, waiting for our train. She grabbed me in her arms, dashing into the restroom where she held me by my ankles over a toilet, and slapped my back until the red disk dislodged from my throat. Only as she was walking out did she notice the sign above the door, and realize she had run into a “Colored Only” restroom. She had lived in California so long, she had forgotten about segregated waiting rooms and separate drinking fountains.

A sharp knock at the door startled her reverie, and she rose from her seat to open it. “Ticket please, Ma’am,” the conductor said. She reached for her purse on the fold-down table, then handed the train ticket to him. “Mrs. Palmer and son?”

“Yes, Bea and Ronnie,” she replied.

His eyes quickly scanned the tiny roomette as he mentally tallied the occupants. My mother stood 5 feet 2 inches tall. Her auburn hair framed a round face. He noticed her deep-set blue eyes. Behind her, I stood beside the window, all freckles and red hair, glancing over my left shoulder at him.

“Very good, Ma’am,” he said, and after punching the ticket, he handed it back to her. She closed the door, and took her seat again.

My red hair shone in the bright morning sun as I stood gazing out the window. Even as a toddler, I was learning how to entertain myself. It went beyond being well behaved. I was already beginning to inhabit my own interior world, and was often content to sit quietly by myself. Something as simple as the undulating patterns of the phone wires outside the train window held my attention. Of course, everything about trains held my attention in those days, and I was thrilled by the prospect of riding one.

I was walking now, and she didn’t think I’d be needing that old stroller, or the highchair, both of which she had sold along with her dining table, chairs, a large mirror, and the living room rug. Just a couple of days before we boarded the train in Los Angeles, she had sold off much of the furniture in the house. What she couldn’t sell quickly, she had placed in storage. In this way, she raised the money for our train tickets to Knoxville.

My mother sat behind me on a berth built into the wall of the sleeper compartment. She puffed her Winston cigarette, periodically tapping the ashes into a tiny chrome ashtray that flipped open from the wall beside her. As the smoke from her cigarette wafted toward the grillwork of the vent above her head, she watched me at the window. Her eyes glazed over with tears. She thought back across the bridge of memories, reflecting on her marriage. She pulled a tissue from her purse, and dabbed lightly at her eyes.

She had turned 33 that year, old enough to remember many things, old enough to wish she could forget almost a decade of disappointments as her passionate marriage to my father began to unravel. It was his fault, she thought to herself as she crushed out her cigarette in the ashtray. Such a waste of talent and energy! How could anybody so hardworking be always on the verge of poverty?