by Gilbert B Norman
There appears to be a rail travel theme in the newly found manuscript of Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird - anyone around here graduate from HS without having read it?), Go Set A Watchman. The description of life in a Roomette appears accurate, and the book's cover has a depiction of an Alco PA.
Read the first chapter, or if too lazy, actress Reese Witherspoon will do it for you:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/harper-lees ... 1436500861" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Fair Use quotation:
Read the first chapter, or if too lazy, actress Reese Witherspoon will do it for you:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/harper-lees ... 1436500861" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Fair Use quotation:
Since Atlanta, she had looked out the dining-car window with a delight almost physical. Over her breakfast coffee, she watched the last of Georgia’s hills recede and the red earth appear, and with it tin-roofed houses set in the middle of swept yards, and in the yards the inevitable verbena grew, surrounded by whitewashed tires. She grinned when she saw her first TV antenna atop an unpainted Negro house; as they multiplied, her joy rose.
Jean Louise Finch always made this journey by air, but she decided to go by train from New York to Maycomb Junction on her fifth annual trip home. For one thing, she had the life scared out of her the last time she was on a plane: the pilot elected to fly through a tornado. For another thing, flying home meant her father rising at three in the morning, driving a hundred miles to meet her in Mobile, and doing a full day’s work afterwards: he was seventy-two now and this was no longer fair.
She was glad she had decided to go by train. Trains had changed since her childhood, and the novelty of the experience amused her: a fat genie of a porter materialized when she pressed a button on a wall; at her bidding a stainless steel washbasin popped out of another wall, and there was a john one could prop one’s feet on.
