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Atlanta job interview is tentatively scheduled for mid-April. And by tentatively, I mean we’ve agreed on a date and I’ve booked a flight.

Spent last night in Meridian, MS (The Queen City, baby!) Had supper at the Crescent City Grill. Mediocre crabcakes, couple of beers. Not as much time to enjoy the hotel as I would have liked because of work. Up this morning at 5 to get ready for the day, down to the school by 7:15. Here’s how small this state is. The woman whom I observed taught two years at my father’s high school alma mater. Her mother and her mother’s sisters graduated from there and may know of my father. The principal at the school I visited today coached the most famous alumnus of Alcorn State University when he played high school football at a school that roughed up my high school a few times, at least one of which I was present for while in middle school.

The railroad (Former New Orleans and Northeast, nee Southern Railway now Norfolk Southern) roughly parallels Mississippi Highway 11 south from Meridian. I have two very vivid childhood memories tied up with that stretch of railroad and highway because as a child I spent many hours sitting in a car or truck by those railroad tracks, listening to railroad chatter on a scanner, eating convenience store nabs and cokes and waiting for trains to show up. The first memory is that the Air National Guard wing based at Key Field in Meridian used to fly the RF-4 Phantom, a version of the F-4 (John McCain’s plane, I believe) converted for reconnaissance duty. There were several Saturdays where my dad and I split focus on the tracks and the runway. Key Field is right across the highway from the railroad. There is/was a fish hatchery just south of town where we’d pull up and sit under a tree and talk about the planes and such. That definitely dates that memory as occurring during the Cold War.

The second memory is a testament to the dedication my father had to photographing trains. South of the fish hatchery is a beautiful, slightly elevated curve on the railroad. Curves are attractive to railfans who photograph, as are trestles, signal bridges and old train stations. We knew an intermodal (piggyback) train was fast approaching from New Orleans because we’d heard about it on the scanner. So we scooted down the highway from the fish hatchery to this curve, parked the car on the side of the road, walked over to the tracks and up a bit into the curve where there was literally no place to stand. The road bed (of the railroad, all those rocks you see which are made of slag) was elevated above what was essentially a swamp. Thus we had to lie on our bellies literally four or five feet from the tracks in order for my father to get the picture he wanted. I knew we were close and was nervous. I also knew that the piggyback train was going to be going fast. Standard speed limits on mainlines for piggyback trains are 59, which in train terms is fast. Passenger trains are generally allowed 79 on good track. Crappy freight trains get 45, I think. And all of this assumes that the engineer is observing the speed limit, which they sometimes do not. So we hear the horn off in the distance, hear the familiar pockety pockety and rumble of diesel engines burning the beloved #2 fuel oil, and then a headlight and a lead locomotive. My father’s shutter starts clicking and I’m about to shit myself in fear. This was a singularly horrifying experience—being that close to an enormous and loud train going that fast. And yet, I didn’t scream or cry or anything like that. When it was all over, we were both pretty thrilled to have lived to tell the tale.

By the way, that curve is just north of a place called Basic City. And being my father’s son, I knew when I saw the sign for Basic City on the highway this morning that it’s pronounced to rhyme with classic. I could probably give you a whole host of other tidbits gleaned from railfanning with him, like the location of the old crew hotel north of Yazoo City on the Illinois Central (now Canadian National) Yazoo District. I could explain to you why the Yazoo District even exists—the delta being flatter than the hill country, the IC routed passenger trains through Canton, Winona, Durant, Grenada, Batesville and Hernando into Memphis and ran its freight through the delta—that is until in the 1990s, Amtrak re-routed the City of New Orleans through the delta and cut back the number of stops between Memphis and Jackson to one: Greenwood. I could tell you the difference between GP and SD locomotives (General Purpose and Special Duty—one had four axles and the other had six. SD motors were also more powerful). I could tell you that my favorite passenger locomotive was the oh-so exotic P-30CH (Pooch) until Amtrak ceased use of the F-40 and moved to the currently hideous Genesis Series diesel locomotive at which point the F-40 became my favorite.  I could tell you that there are two major locomotive manufacturers in this country: General Electric and the Electro Motive Division of General Motors. Only EMD uses the GP/SD designation. For the longest time GE used the U-(insert model number) designation, until it switched to C and a -7, -8, -9 (pronounced Dash 7, Dash 8, Dash 9) of which the Dash 7 was the first computerized locomotive.

And last, but certainly not pedantically least, I could tell you that the train is the entire thing—locomotive, cars and all. The locomotive/engine/motor is at the head end. The thing on the back is playfully referred to as a F.R.E.D. (Flashing Rear End Device). The engineer operates the locomotive with the assistance of a head brakeman. Passenger trains used to have firemen, but most if not all Amtrak trains operate with one person on the head end.

Speaking of passenger trains, Casey Jones fireman, Sim Webb, was from Water Valley, about 25 miles south of where I live. That story was one of my favorites as a little kid. At some point I’m sure I’ll tell it to my son, too.

So you wonder why I have a mind for trivia—it has a lot to do with trains and listening to an obsessed hobbyist talk about them for hours on end while waiting for them to come have their pictures taken.