A favorite memory from a long ago past.
Clickety-clacking along in a horse express car on a humid summer night passing through Iowa into Missouri along the Mississippi River. Flashes of lightening reveal stark white farmsteads, as fireflies shoot up from weeds along the tracks as if they were sparks struck from the steel rails. On the river a brightly lit stern wheeler carries tourists along on a slower journey. Later on, awakening to a gray dawn as the CB&Q train slows and passes through East Saint Louis, we are now on the other side of the river in Illinois, with the nearly completed Saint Louis Arch gleaming in the distance. Having come by way of Omaha, Council Bluffs and Des Moines, I learned why the Mid-west is called the Heartland of America, no words were spoken, none were needed.
