João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brasil

I gave myself a present yesterday, simply because I deserved it.

I took a bus from practically in front of my hotel to the end of the line in Bedelco and asked directions. The shopkeeper drew me an L-shaped road with a railway line intersecting the first road before the bend toward the station.

I like things simple, so you can never embarrass me when you draw a picture. You couldn't embarrass me if you wrote out the alphabet each time you gave me something to read.

I got to the train station and paid 50 centavos (about 15¢) to enter.

I've loved trains all my life. My uncle drove a passenger train from Kingston to Montego Bay, where I was born. I don't recall ever seeing him in the engine.

My friend, Robbie, drove trains in St. Elizabeth, hauling bauxite to Port Kaiser. Just pray the brakes don't fail while you are hauling all that load downhill to the port.

Some evenings, Robbie would blow the whistle on his way down to the port, while Teddy Comrie and I would be in my kitchen, about 50 yards away, cooking. Then we would put the food in a carrier and sit on the line until we heard the train returning to the mines. He would slow down and we would hand the food to a sideman.

As children, we would go on church excursions from Kingston to May Pen, or Porus, or some other rural town. It was an annual ritual. We would prepare sandwiches the night before, get out of bed early enough to walk to the train station downtown. Early because the buses started running too late to get us to the station on time.

Long, long before I fell in love with jazz, I fell in love with the rhythms of train wheels. Loved when the train took those long curves so you could see other people in other trains in front and back. We are talking about steam engines, so I found I prefered to sit facing the back of the train to avoid the ash, or whatever that was, from getting into my eyes.

When I was about 11 and a student at All Saints School on West and Charles Streets, our class went on an excursion. I believe I tried to kiss a girl named Bonito while we were going through a tunnel. We were heading somewhere on the northeast coast, I believe where Errol Flynn had his house. She probably forget that kiss by the next tunnel.

Fairly short rides are the best. After a while, Toronto to Chicago wasn't fun. The same, during spring break of 1972, on that trip from Chicago to New Orleans. First of all, we had to get from Madison, Wisconsin to the Chicago train station. We probably made that by bus.

But returning from New Orleans to Chicago was worse because there was some flooding, causing long delays.

Of course, New Orleans was memorable, to this day, so we managed the delays without distress.

Yesterday, according to the information in my Olympus C-700 Ultra Zoom, 2.1 megapixel with 10X optical zoom, the train pulled into the station at 3:36 PM.

The train is not modern but not decrepit either. My car was painted gray and the adjoining car had a bit of yellow, which gave the impression that it had light. Of course, it didn't.

The mood was festive. Continuous movement and talking and laughing and buys of things to eat and drink and changing seats. A slender woman in a bikini top and a skirt is doing pull-ups on the one of three rows of what, in New York City, used to be known as straphangers. Of course, they are not made of leather straps anymore, but of metal.

A man moves in slow-motion while cleaning the cars. Three men walk through, selling edibles, including a very popular frozen delight called din-din. More or less, it is a frozen drink in a plastic wrapper.

In my car, the seats are blue and the windows at the bottom half are frosted, while the top half is metalic with about one-inch diameter holes. It is not easy to see through so, after the engine changed positions and moved out of the station, at 4:02, I stood up.

Inside the train there is absolutely no writing. No warning about smoking, leaning on the doors. Nothing. No advertising. No grafitti.

The chatter and laughter does not stop. It is a holiday mood. People, for insurance, keep one foot inside the train to prevent the door closing, while they get that last few puffs of smoke into their lungs. Oh, so good!

There seems to be no impatience on the part of the passengers, some of whom are standing. A man enters, sits, and, a few minutes later, examines his watch. He doesn't seem to belong in that crowd.

No one is running to get into the train either.

At 4:02 the motorman blows the horn a couple of times and the train pulls out. I had expected to feel a jolt when the engine connected, but didn't. People continue to change seats.

We are now picking up speed and the wheels are in full swing, producing those rhythms that takes me back to my youth, those ancient days in the 40s when coal dust was unwelcome in one's eyes.

On the third stop before the terminal, the train waited while a little boy peed into that space between the platform and the train. One of the guards held up his hand for the motorman to wait. The train moved and suddenly stopped again. I looked out to see a woman and two children running to get into the train. Even it runs on the half hour, the train had actually stopped to allow this family to get on.

I was very surprised that when we entered the terminal and started exiting, the crowd outside were so intent on getting seats that they left very little room for us to exit.

I delayed my exit by stopping to take a picture and had to ask the guard to not chain the gate.

I then walked in front of the bus station, drank a glass of cane juice; continued walking to buy the Correio Brasilense from this newstand. It is a strange newstand. People just stand around reading the newspapers. And the owner tries to sell me other papers.

He'll say that two papers cost R$8.50 and then when I hesitate he will say OK give me R$8.30.

I bought some incense in case, God forbid, I run into another Senora X situation, a lighter, and then walk to the Central Market to bus No. 510 to Tambaú.

The joys of life!

PBB