Jimbaux wonders, will you recognize him? Call his name or walk on by.
Won’t You Come See About Me?
Today was the first day of a two-night trip back home that, according to plans, should include my first visit to New Orleans since my only visit there a month after moving away from the metro area.
Today was a great day!
Automobiles And Highways
I rolled out of the house at 05:50 this morning, Monday 4 December 2023. This time, I was in my truck with overnight supplies, unlike last week’s trip that was supposed to be the overnight trip but wasn’t, due to truck trouble that I had.
Yesterday morning just past midnight, I got awoken with a request to help pick up someone off of the floor, which I did and which also worries me about being gone for three nights now. I never really went back to sleep after that.
Yesterday, I worked primarily on blog posts and Facebook postings, because December is an active month, especially late December, on the blog. I got the early December 2003 posts done and scheduled, and they will publish on their respective vicennial days 04:00, and I got Facebook scheduled postings done.
I went to sleep at around 19:00-20:00 last night after eating a salad. I figured that I would be able to fall asleep fairly early last night and wake up today before the alarm clock rang, and that’s what happened. I was awake today well before 04:00, probably not long after 03:00, to get prepared for the trip today.
There were no snags except for one problem that I am trying to keep in perspective, a problem that was eventually going to happen anyway but also a problem due to my own negligence. I appear to have destroyed my older camera, the one that Jamal Lee basically gave to me in 2011. It was in the camera bag on the shelf, but it wasn’t closed. I took the camera bag off of the shelf, but, when I took it out, the camera slipped out, because the bag was not closed, because I had neglected to close it. The camera goes on and off, but it won’t take a picture and won’t auto focus. I tried different lenses, and they didn’t work.
So, that’s bad, and now I am down to one camera, at least my better one, but it’s funny thinking about this because I also recently had been worried that I wasn’t going to have my good camera, either because it would be temporarily out of service and need to be fixed or permanently out of service, destroyed, due to the mess on the sensor.
I got such an early start that I figured that I might get to Schriever in time to see the Schriever Job leave. One great thing about getting older is this business of naturally awakening early!
I am just generally feeling bad about life, thinking plenty about some persons, thinking about a few health problems, even though I look good for my age at the gym.
I am again thinking about that meme from autism-ADHD land about being robbed of a childhood, which I mentioned last time. In early adulthood, I did the things that I could, traveled, took a bunch of pictures, learned so many things, and met interesting people, but I don’t know now.
I was listening to Eagle 98.1, FM radio, and I heard “Give Me Back My Bullet” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, then “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana, then Richard Condon doing “this day in history” stuff and then sports; I was feeling queasy about that.
KRVS is playing Cajun music this early in the morning.
I was pretty hungry and unsure of what I would do about it.
I am looking forward to checking out Live Oak Junction at the crack of dawn tomorrow, and I might even check out Central Avenue. We shall see.
I just hate living a lie, but I’ve never had a choice, really. It’s just been worse since 2012 and, especially, since 2018-2019.
Berwick
There was an eastbound BNSF Railway manifest train parked on the mainline in Berwick, and it’s my first shot of the day, just a little bit before 07:00.
The bridge was in upright position, suggesting that no railroad movements were about to happen here.
Morgan City
A few minutes later, I am in Morgan City. There were 12 hopper cars at the port. I was quite hungry and decided to just keep moving, hoping to get to Schriever early enough to catch the Louisiana & Delta Railroad train SC1. Richard Condon was on the radio saying stupid things, and I couldn’t even listen to it.
Schriever!
I arrived at the sacred place at 07:32, and, as I had hoped, the SC1 was working, but I didn’t realize it right away!
I looked to the east and saw an empty centerbeam car and a bunch of tank cars. The L&D locomotive was not in its track. I erroneously thought that the job was gone, but I then realized that it was at the eastern end of the yard; the locomotive was on the storage track obscured by tank cars in the siding.
More than 10 minutes later, as the locomotive worked its way back west, I was able to get several views of it!
That view and the next three views are cell-phone snaps.
As typically happens here on Mondays, the train was preparing to go east.
So, almost certainly, some of the tank cars were bound for Raceland Raw Sugar, and, probably, some of them were bound for Monsanto.
I had been considering going to Raceland to try to find it, which would have been arduous. I really didn’t know what to do with it if it was gone already.
I figured that I should probably change my shoes. I should have cleaned my boots.
The next 11 views at Schriever are SLR-camera images.
The 1847 is really stretched far out on the siding there.
That centerbeam car is the same one that I photographed here empty last week.
What is in here?
This is much better.
This is even better!
All of this helps treat the gigantic wound, but it never will heal it.
The locomotive is shoving some tank cars into the Napoleonville Branch stub.
It’s a damned shame that the Napoleonville Branch is gone.
It’s also a damned shame that trains are not nearly as interesting as they once were.
Isn’t life supposed to get better?
That car was there when I was here on Thursday, and I am quite surprised that it still is not unloaded.
Now, it was time to leave.
Yes, I am getting gasoline at the traditional place.
About 20 years ago, this was my regular gasoline spot.
Bravo Kilo
Next, it was time to satiate my hunger at a familiar old place.
The place has been remodeled.
It’s not the same as it was.
I guess that this remodeling is an improvement, if we’re discussing starting from scratch, but, given the way that I am, I want it the way that it was, even it has problems, which is why I loved Sunrise Chicken in Lockport until it closed in early 2018.
I want the thing the way that it was, even if it has problems. There were like four old guys sitting there in Burger King visiting. I sat in the north part by the highway, and the music was a little too loud.
Burger King experience was not that good, but I had to go there to know that!
I felt dirty after this Burger King visit.
My initial plan was to walk in the neighborhood near the Burger King after finishing my food there, especially as I had yet to take a walk today, but the fact that I had to take a giant dump before I left changed those plans. I suddenly was in no mood for a walk!
I looked at the land surveyor place and wondered if someone I know still works there. It made me think about that T Baker Smith thing, wondering if what I said there was a red flag, and see it as a sign of my unraveling that was happening at the time, not long before I knew that I was autistic, because I wouldn’t have said that to employers five or ten years before. I didn’t say that to Hal Collums.
So, anyway, instead of walking in that neighborhood, I departed for Melodia Plantation, even though it was still too early to catch the #1. I wanted to just sit there, to just be there.
There was sugar cane blown over by Laurel Valley. The area by Lafourche Crossing across the bayou from Highway 308 has been cleaned out of vegetation.
After this, I am not sure what I will do. I might go to campus. I will have to make a decision. Maybe I should go to Lockport. I don’t know. Empty cane trucks were passing me, new houses are going up, and a Jeff Landry sign is in front of a cute little house that I passed. It’s such a shame, but it’s also appropriate.
Melodia
I ate some of those blueberries while I was parked at Melodia.
I was about to get a little surprise, a little bonus.
I was here to photograph a westbound passenger train, but, then, an eastbound freight train passed!
Yes, that is the train that we saw switching at Schriever earlier!
Wow, with switching all of those cars that he was switching at Schriever, he is still leaving with only two cars, eastbound.
At 10:05, Amtrak Julie told me that the #1 is 10 or 12 minutes late. I wonder if it is late because of the L&D job running here, or if the L&D job got allowed to go because the #1 was late.
I’m not feeling that great.
At 10:30, Julie said that the train is getting later. Again, was it made late by L&D, or was L&D allowed to go because the #1 was late? I don’t know, but this is kind of pathetic.
I finally saw a headlight at 10:47 and got set up for the shot.
The next curve in the track is more than five miles east of here; that long stretch of straight track allows one to see a headlight approaching several minutes before the train passes.
The train passed me at 10:52.
This is nice!
The clouds cooperated.
I needed clouds, because, without them, the train would be coming out of the sun.
Yes, the short length of this thing is pathetic.
Next, I did something amazing yet banal.
Campus!
In the last 11 years, I suffered a life-altering trauma that I cannot publicly describe.
I returned to the place of positive memories and even glory.
When I did this last week, it was my first time here since the eviction.
This is place, memory, and identity.
When you don’t feel like you have a future, you get stuck in the past.
I am so close.
Either this or the large field to the west of it is the center of the universe.
I am so hurt by the loss.
Still, I had a great visit on campus, visited Chris again and Deb, for the first time in more than 20 years. I was one of her first students. I had to tell her my name, but she remembered me. She didn’t seem to remember much about me. She looks good.
I got invited both to a Mass-Comm party this afternoon and an art-department party on Wednesday afternoon!
I went into Elkins Hall and Powell-White Hall. I briefly went into Polk Hall, went in the Student Union again and into Talbot Hall. When I was here last week, I didn’t go upstairs in Talbot, but I did this time.
Food
I left campus and went eat.
Well, that was expensive.
Back At Melodia
A way other than currency or credit that that Raising Cane’s meal cost me is that it made me get back to Melodia just a few minutes too late to get catch the L&D job returning to Schriever. At about 14:44, I saw it just up the bayou from Melodia with about 10 cars, all tank cars.
I got by the track, parked, at about 14:48.
I just sat by the track, as I so often did 20 years ago, and I wonder what else I should have been doing with that time.
There are a bunch of new neighborhoods around here, and all are dependent upon automobiles, such as it is. Something about this is just wrong.
Derek followed me on Twitter. He is a horrible dude.
I haven’t heard from Rich, and I will give up on that. I can come some other time. Afterall, I got invited to a Mass-Comm party today and an art department party on Wednesday afternoon!
Interesting! I should tell my lodging host and my aunt!
Anyway, I was hoping to get the Union Pacific Railroad’s New Iberia Turn out here, but that didn’t happen.
One of the more peculiar aspects of this already-peculiar ‘hobby’ of railroad photography is that there are occasions on which the sound of an approaching train that you did not know was coming is not a welcome sound but, rather, is a trigger for frustration and a cause for disappointment, and that is what happened this afternoon here.
A big hint is the less-than-ideal lighting of the train, as the front of the train is dark. Another hint is that the top of the front of the train is too close to the top of the trees, suggesting a poorly composed image if the photographer had this view in mind.
More specifically, this train is moving in the wrong direction, not by its own standards or by the railroad’s standards, of course, since it’s safe to assume that this train is going in the direction in which it is supposed to be going, but, rather, because the photographer was hoping for a train – and a specific train, which this train obviously is not – coming from the other direction, and catching that train was the point of being at this location this afternoon.
Recent HUMINT had suggested that the UP New Iberia Turn would pass westbound through this area east of Lafourche Crossing before dark, even in this time of year of shortened days, but that did not happen today (unless it passed very early).
Oh, well.
So, the photographer heard horns, just from the opposite direction from which he was hoping to hear them. Here is an eastbound BNSF Railway manifest train not long before dusk, shortly after it crossed Bayou Lafourche. This spot is a little bit more than 7.4 miles from the west siding switch of the Raceland siding.
That meant that, even if the New Iberia Turn were sitting in the nearest spot at which it could have safely and legally been sitting as this eastbound train passed, nearly 15 miles would have to be traversed, half by either train, and one accelerating from a dead stop, before it would arrive here.
Oh, well.
You win some, you lose some.
This image is for educational purposes only. You are not allowed to enjoy it.
Yeah, check out those new VULX hopper cars at the end of the train!
The time was 16:05, and I left to go to the party back on campus.
The Party And The House
I went briefly to the MACO party and talked to my advisor, whom I had not seen in 11 and a half years, and the department head recognized me, too! I had a wonderful time and felt appreciated like I hadn’t felt appreciated in many years.
Yes, I took pictures there, but I shalln’t share them here.
At 17:34, after “Santeria” by Sublime played on the radio, I arrived back at my host’s house to that “Don’t You Forget About Me” song, which is quite an appropriate song for today!
‘Twas time to eat.
Today was a great, action-packed day, even though I spent much time pacing around by the track.
I also got reminded of what an actual, sane house looks like.
That is much better than the horrible hostile architecture to which I am subjected now.
Tomorrow, I plan to go to New Orleans for the first time in nearly four years. That will be interesting and memorable regardless of what happens.
Stay tuned!
Jbx
