Ch 2: The Desert Wind

March 15th, 1995, 1:10 PM EST, Caldwell Limited, near Rochester, NY

John Caldwell sat in a hot tub reflecting on how short life really was. He looked out at the still-grey world outside the glass enclosed room he sat in. It seemed like only yesterday, in some ways, that he married Gretel not too far from where he now sat. But it was 18 years ago! In September, his son George would be an adult. He had already graduated from high school, for crying out loud!

Admittedly those 18 years were barely more than a quarter of his life, but still. 18 years is a long time. He was 44 when he met Gretel, retired from Southern and occasionally doing consultation on how to preserve old train stations. Not that he needed to. He had lived frugally his entire life and had acquired quite a bit of money, as of soon he would be getting social security, his matched 401(k) was paying good money, and he'd been wise with his investment.

Still, he worried about Gretel. She was not as frugal as he was, although she was not crazy with spending money. He made almost half a million dollars a year between the various things he made money from- dividends, interest, 401(k), and so on. But she would outlive him by many, many years. He knew that with almost complete certainty.

He was blown away when he found out that she was born in 1957! 19 years old? She had seemed so much more mature than 19 years could possibly have wrought. They had their spats, that was for sure. You always do when you're married. But it had been pretty clean on the whole. Especially considering their 25 year age gap.

Not to mention their disagreement on George. She had felt that George should always be with both parents, and he had felt that George should stay in roughly the same place and lay anchors. She won on that, because they dragged George around wherever they went on their jobs- his station consultation and her book writing. He had grown up unusually conservative for his age group; except for his libido. But John couldn't hold that against him. John hadn't settled down until his mid-forties, for crying out loud.

The rail life had done all that to him. He had started as just an assistant Pullman Conductor, primarily on the Seaboard, but had moved his way up those ranks until Santa Fe saw his potential as a manager and hired him from Pullman. He had always moved around the country all the time, and never set anchors. One night stands with younger women that he impressed with dinners and nice hotels were his norm, a few times a month. For the most part, it was all that he spent money on.

Gretel had been someone special, and it had changed the way he thought. He was still a man with considerable wanderlust. But Gretel meant he was no longer a loner with wanderlust. Both he and Gretel had more of it then their fair share and it made for an ideal pairing.

Still, the Caldwell Limited, as they liked to call home, provided a bit of stationary permanence. They didn't take it where ever they went, but since they put it together it was moved no less then once every five years.

John fully understood George's lack of want to go to college. John was one of the brighter people in the world, and he hated doing managerial work that amounted to doing nothing. He had accepted the job with Santa Fe because it mostly entailed making sure everything went perfectly onboard their crack trains. He was always riding them and helping crew out. His office in Chicago saw him once a month if it was lucky. Santa Fe didn't care. The Super Chief ran like it always did, and so did the El Captain. It was him that made sure they remained what they had always been after the Amtrak turnover.

When Amtrak stopped letting them provide that service, he quit. After that, there was nothing that he wanted to do for Santa Fe. But someone had been watching what he did for Santa Fe, and that person was W. Graham Claytor. His Southern Railroad had done something he had begged his bosses to do- and they almost listened- and that was opt out of Amtrak.

Not that he had objected to Amtrak entirely. Ran properly, it could have done a lot of good. It would have killed some of the nastiness that existed on some railroads- nastiness that killed rail ridership. Rusty, leaky, filthy equipment. Outrageously long schedules to serve all stops, and thus not require more than one train a day. People hadn't seen boredom until they rode a 1200 mile all-local-stop train.

Automats instead of other kinds of food service. No sleepers on very long, overnight trains. And many of these trains were mixed mongrels, hauling both freight and passengers. They ran late very frequently. Moreover, there were definitely some very redundant trains being run.

But among the companies, three had stood out. Southern, Santa Fe, and Seaboard. All three tried their damndest to run every train they had as well as they could. None of the three had seen the kinds of losses the other companies had seen. All three thought long and hard about joining Amtrak, or Railpax as it had been known at the time. Seaboard was the first to go- they had plans to merge with the Chessie System and Chessie wasn't interested in being involved with passenger trains.

Seaboard dropped it, and several years later they merged to form Chessie Seaboard Expanded, or CSX. Santa Fe thought even harder about it. Santa Fe wasn't interested in merging with anyone- they covered all the markets they needed to cover, and Santa Fe was much more than just a railroad anyway. Santa Fe wouldn't think about merging until Union Pacific acquired Missouri Pacific trackage in the early 80s and thus could compete with it in the Chicago market. But in the end they decided that since everyone else was going, they should join too.

Southern, though, opted out. W. Graham Claytor was not going to turn over what he considered the "face" of his company to some government company, and he didn't. Southern kept running their train in the grand tradition. He hired John in late 1972 to help him keep the train running the best it could be run. In late 1976, though, John decided to call it quits, mainly because the pride of Southern's onboard service crew was such that he wasn't needed.

In 1979, Claytor was forced into his retirement, partly because of his age, and also because Southern wanted to merge with Norfolk and Western. Norfolk and Western weren't interested so long as Southern had the money loss of the Crescent on their books and Graham wouldn't budge on the subject. So out he went.

It was John and a young George who convinced Claytor to take the offered job of running Amtrak.

"Come on, Graham," John had said to Claytor, who was sitting in the living room of Caldwell Limited at the time, "This is what you want to do. Nobody can run trains, or understands and loves passenger railroading like you do. Except maybe me. But they aren't offering me the job, and besides you have more, er, tact than I do."

"You got that right," Claytor smiled, "But I'll be out in a year or less. I'm not willing to let them turn Amtrak into a large subway system!"

"But Mr. Claytor," little George had said, "who else will make the trains good?"

"You have a point," Graham had admitted.

He had died last year, mere months after giving up his office due to declining health.

The thought brought his mind back to George. He wanted George to settle down. That was why he was sending him to college. He was hoping if he was anchored somewhere, he might get anchored to someone. And if he was anchored to someone, he might produce grandchildren. If he left George to his own devices, and he settled down at the same age John did, John would be 90- and he didn't think he'd live that long.

His thoughts were interrupted again because a very beautiful naked woman named Gretel was coming up the stairs. Now barely 37 years old, the oldest he had ever known her age to be guessed was 30- and that was him 17 years ago, and because of her intelligence and maturity, not her appearance. She was still sexy as hell. Her blonde curls had lost a little colour, her hips had widened a bit with giving birth, and her breasts had also grown a bit. They sagged a little, but you'd only know that if you knew her beforehand. She hated body hair- the only hair she had was on her head.

The picture was enough to give him an instant hard on, something not at all helped by her climbing into the the hot tub and sitting astride his lap. The problem was made even larger when she started kissing him solidly enough to make his toes curl and white to creep in at the sides of his vision. Desire filled his body and he started to pull her closer to hi-