The Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe

Ramona
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Watch out for this entry--your weird-shit-o-meter may max out!

We drove from Oklahoma City to Dallas today.  We had not made any plans in advance, as we didn't know whether we might be needed to help out with wedding/travel arrangements, or whether Dad & Liz might want to get together this afternoon, or whatnot, but as it turned out, we were not needed anywhere, and had the whole day free.  So Tim prowled through the tour book and found a railway history museum in Dallas which sounded interesting--and cheap!--so we thought that would be a perfect way to while away the afternoon, preferably mostly out of the heat, which in Texas, lives up to all billing.  Upper 90s for the duration.

I've had some strange experiences in Post Offices over the years, but that one may take the cake.

Hotel Room Decor
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En route to Dallas, we stopped for lunch at a taco joint.  As there was a post office more or less next door, I thought I'd mail some postcards.  So in I went, all unsuspecting, and asked the post office clerk for four postcard stamps.  She opened up her stamp drawer and started paging through the notebook of stamps.  I did NOT make up the following conversation:

Clerk:  Do you know how much they are?

Me:  What?

Clerk:  Are they 17 cents or 28 cents?

Almost Russian--The October 1917 Revolution Stopped the Train
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Me:  I have no idea, which is why I came to the post office.  But I bet they aren't 17 cents, as that is the cost for an extra ounce on a letter.

Clerk:  Oh, yeah.

Eventually, without even attempting to consult any reference (of which there apparently was none!), the clerk announced that they don't sell postcard stamps.  Silly me.  I thought this was the post office.  I've had some strange experiences in Post Offices over the years, but that one may take the cake.

The Railroad Museum
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From there, things only got worse.  We worked our way through truly terrible traffic at the I-35E/I-30 interchange in downtown Dallas, discovered that the Museum of the American Railroad is on the grounds of the state fair site.  We also discovered that there are about a jillion entries into the grounds, none of which appeared to be the right one.  After driving completely around the thing (blocks and blocks and blocks!), avoiding various entrances at which people wearing those vests with big pockets appeared to be taking money for parking for some event or another, I called the museum and fed Tim directions from the museum attendant.  Eventually, after swerving across some railroad tracks and around about 1000 orange traffic cones, we found the place.  In we went, paid our money (only $2.50 with AAA), and learned that there are no bathrooms.  Anywhere near there.  We actually had to get back in the car and drive out of the fairgrounds again, find a gas station, and then repeat, more or less, the shenanigans that got us into the place the first time.  TOTALLY insane.

Chessie the Railroad Cat
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The museum turns out to be all outdoors--and it was HOT--but we had bought bottled water at the gas station (turned out to be a good move!), so we managed to work through the whole place.  It is actually quite interesting; they have a wide variety of train cars, engines, cabooses, Pullman cars, dining cars, and so on...BUT the whole operation is mickey mouse in the extreme.  There is a brochure with numbered sites, so you can go from car to car and read about them, but the numbering turns out to be more theoretical than actual, AND it turns out to bear no resemblance to any organizational plan.  So visiting that museum is a matter of poking about and trying to figure out which cars fit which descriptions.  AND the train bell we were told we could ring didn't work.  (Though someone else got it to ring later!)

Big Boy--the Biggest Steam Engine Ever Built (1.5 million tons)
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So...the upside is that the cars themselves are interesting and varied, the people that go there are pretty much fanatics, so if you eavesdrop on their conversations you can learn a lot about railroading history, it's very cheap if you show your AAA card, and there is a very nice hound dog named Ramona who will be your friend for life if you pet her.  But go to the bathroom first.

Next weird event of the day:  we decided to go check in at the hotel before undertaking further adventures in Dallas area traffic, and so we headed to Arlington.  Turned out that when you get off the freeway you have a very short distance to cross over four lanes of heavy traffic to make a lefthand turn onto the street where the hotel is.  The reason for the heavy traffic is a HUGE shopping mall.  It was a matter of a glance to determine that this wasn't going to work, so I said, "I'll just make a right turn into that mall entrance, turn around, and then come back out at the light. Then I can just go straight."  This seemed an eminently sensible plan, until I made the right turn and discovered that the traffic at the mall in Arlington is so bad (at least on a Saturday afternoon), that there are lane-control cones and police directing traffic.  No kidding.  Police traffic control in the mall parking lot.  These people are nuts.

Restored Guide House
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The hotel itself is fine, even if it does have pictures of cowboy boots up on the wall.  (Don't believe me?  Think no one would do that?  See photo documentation!)  That and the ice machine is out of order.  In Texas.  In August.  I think there ought to be a law against that.

We decided to write off the Frisco minor league ball club, as driving there would have entailed going back up through north Dallas traffic, and in the end, we went to the game in Ft. Worth--the Ft. Worth Cats vs. the Shreveport-Bossiesr Captains.  Dave decided to go with us, and we had a nice evening.  The game was a little better than last night--there was at least some really good fielding, and the players were hustling.  There were some boneheaded plays, and a bunch of wild pitches and passed balls that resulted in runs, so it's pretty clear why these guys aren't in the major league track.  Still it was a fun evening.

From the Santa Fe
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Oh--I might just warn you about the teeny-bopper cheerleaders dressed up in Wonder Woman suits.  Just a little on the creepy side.  Felt sorry for the mascot:  a guy in a HUGE furry black cat suit.  Must be hellacious in there--about 120 degrees!  Home team won this one, though, so that was good.

Final weird event of the day:  the National Anthem and "God Bless America" were played by a group of women playing flutes, including bass flutes, which I had never seen before.  It is hard to imagine 25 women all playing flutes at the same time, unaccompanied by any other mitigating instrument, but the cogent assessment was that it sounded like a calliope.  The urge to look around for the monkey and the tin cup was powerful.  D- on the baseball music-o-meter.  This was not balanced by "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," which, though garnering bonus points for being played on a real-honest-to-goodness ballpark organ (or some simulation thereof; we couldn't actually SEE it), was played at the meter of a dirge.  Terrible.

La Grave Field; Ft. Worth in Distance (can you spot the cheerleaders?)
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We did not win the t-shirts or the coupons for a free hamburger at Kasey's (which David has never heard of.  He thought maybe they were the hamburgers that they sell at the ballpark).  But we did get the free can of Coke Zero on the way out of the ballpark.  It's not a loaf of bread or a Bengay Ultra Strength Pain Relieving Patch (both of which we've gotten at other ballparks), but still.

We also managed to not adopt a dog on the way in or out of the ballpark.  They have a serious racket going here...the local pet adoption agency stands at the entry gates with the prettiest, friendliest, best behaved dogs in town, all wearing a little blanket that says "Adopt me!" and wagging their tails.  In case that didn't do the trick, they bring one out during one of the between-inning games in which Dodger the Mascot cat is pretending that he's going to win the race around the bases with the five-year-old du jour until the dog, last night it was Murphy, according to the PA announcer, chases the mean old cat mascot away.  Clever.  Kid gets to win, fans get to laugh, and everyone gets a reminder of how cute and useful Murphy (whose name they now know) is.  I didn't see Murphy in the dog line at the exit gate.  I'm thinking he was adopted by the start of the next inning.

Dodger the Cat
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Gotta love minor league--or in this case, independent league--baseball!

Tomorrow, the main event:  the wedding!

Addendum:  The 1.5 million ton number is obviously wrong; I wrote it down without thinking about it.  It's what I heard one of the volunteers say to a visitor--at least that's what I thought I heard.  Probably it was 1.5 million pounds, a rather large difference!  But I can't verify the correct number.  Also of interest:  the museum is moving to Frisco in the next few years.  I'm for it.  Maybe they'll have restrooms!