From today, Jimbaux will do better Because he never wants to feel the shame With every vein that he has severed He has struggled with what he became
I Love Life More Than Life Loves Me
Today, on the occasion of a funeral, I returned to the scene of sustained trauma for me, for the purpose of exposure therapy, to address cabin fever, and to see and chase my favorite train.
This was only the second chase of a train that I do in 2024, and, really, it’s actually the first, since, while the first one was indeed a chase, I still shot it at only one location, even though I chased it there.
Today, I made my first SLR-camera pictures since The 3rd, 15 days ago, which were my first SLR-camera pictures in about a month and a half.
Today was a great day that involved exposure therapy for trauma that I have faced, and I got to chase my favorite train as a treat.
One year ago today, I chased a BNSF Railway train on this Lafayette Subdivision that was led by CP 9375, and, today, that locomotive, since repainted into the new Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited railroad paint scheme, is in Kansas City for the “Final Spike” ceremony as CP 2816, a steam locomotive, leads the Final Spike Steam Tour train southward.
Isn’t that neat?
One year to the day before that, two years ago today, I chased the Union Pacific Railroad local train westward from the homeland.
So, will I get some good train pictures for the third consecutive May 18th?
Well, I think that you’ve figured out the answer by now!
Yes, you have, of course.
So, since it has been a few weeks since the last post, I will post some thoughts from the last few weeks before we get to today’s pictures. If you are here only for the pictures, just scroll past all of this psychobabble from me until you get to the pictures.
Monday, May 6th
According to the scale, a few minutes after 08:00, I weigh 161.4 pounds, which is tied for a low that I achieved a few weeks ago, a low in this weight-loss journey of the last few years. Almost certainly, the last time that I weighed this low was 2010. It’s possible that I weighed this low as recently as 2014, almost certainly not any time after 2018. I really don’t know; I didn’t regularly keep track of my weight until the last year.
The two big issues since then are April’s treachery and what it says about my future with the organization and the job application for the adjunct ESL adult-education instructor.
When I awoke Friday morning really early, before 04:00, it hit me! I finally remembered where I have seen this pattern before. The situation reminded me of like the guy who romantically or sexually pursues a woman and gets rejected by her and then responds to the rejection by claiming that she is ugly and-or that he never was interested in her, and that’s what is going on here, because it seems to me that this guy’s actual problem with me is that I did work well but refused to return, and he was upset with that.
Yeah, bullies are good at detecting who autistic people are, but that also means that exposure to autistic people is a good way of detecting who bullies are! So, flip that around.
I am getting triggered not by people who smoke cigarettes but people who don’t smoke cigarettes but who tolerate it. They are like April.
Oh, Subway doesn’t serve breakfast anymore, and they don’t do wraps anymore as of a couple of months ago, which is weird, because wraps make it possible to eat something while driving without making a mess. So, I got the flatbread thing and couldn’t eat it while driving. So, there goes one of the main reasons that I was eating at Subway. What is up with that?
I learned this morning that a sibling of one of my grandparents died last night. She was 96 years old. She fell, and, apparently, she fell a few weeks ago, too. So, it may be complications from the fall that killed her.
Oddly enough, I got a text message, albeit probably a mass text message, reminding me about the class tomorrow. I am going to go, and April is going to get told off, probably one way or the other, and that’s that.
Tuesday, May 7th
I am being reminded now of that thinking that I have recently about how one of the reasons that I don’t fit in with socialists and the reason that I don’t think of myself as a worker even when I am a worker is, I guess it is an autism thing or even an ADHD thing. It’s super difficult to explain.
I want my dignity back! I want my dignity back. I want that feeling that I had for a few years while I lived in New Orleans back. I want that feeling back, that feeling that I had for a period of, really, fewer than three years, really from the second half of 2007 until the beginning of 2010, if that.
I am nervous about this encounter. There is no way that I am going to say whatever the best thing is to say.
I’ve got my telephoto lens with me because I have an idea of photographing the eastbound Sunset Limited coming past the yard, if it’s late enough.
Yeah, like, I was thinking last night again about how the realization that I had last summer helped me to get past regret, because I have come to understand and accept that, with only very few special exceptions, nothing else that I have ever said that I wished that I would have done would have worked.
Lunch at Chuy’s was okay, but now my gut is feeling weird.
At around 14:30 CDT, LDRR 1846 and LDRR 1702 are parked in the beginning of the Southpark Spur. I guess that the job is tied up for the day. I am not sure when the last time that I came here was. It’s been a while. There are four OLNX hopper cars, pink hopper cars, parked back here, another hopper car there, and just one boxcar. I don’t know; it’s getting slow with the boxcars.
The moment of truth is going to be here in about a half hour. I am going to have to go inside of there and see that abuser-enabler. The class is becoming a waste of my time, but I like to finish what I start.
Like I get it now, man; life is all about relationships. I am just very anthropological. I just can’t do the thing like almost everyone else. I just can’t do the thing like almost everyone else.
Wow! There was a cat that just crossed the road with what I thought was a large catch in its mouth, but the catch turned out to be a kitten!
Okay, telling April that I am autistic won’t help me. It may make things even worse. She just did something that is manifestly wrong; I don’t need to bring autism into it.
At 16:30, the class was done, and I was leaving the class. It was a good class, the class was good, but everything else about it made me think that the situation between me and the organization is hopeless. Whatever. Maybe what I will do is write down everything that happened last week on Wednesday, just so that there is a record of it.
I didn’t really talk to April. I ignored her. She kind of came toward me at the end and asked what I was looking for, and I told her that I needed some water. The signals that I picked up from the leader subtly suggested two things, that she knows that something is up and that she is kind of blowing me off.
Man, to hell with neurotypicals and their damn bullying ways.
I called Amtrak Julie, and she said something about a service disruption and would transfer me to an agent; so, I hung up, as I always do in that situation, because I don’t want to take up an actual human being’s time when I am neither a passenger nor a ride for a passenger.
So, I will return to the class next week just because I am finishing what I start and because I am curious, but I will operate under the assumption that, other than that last class, I have no future with the organization. We’re done, and, like I said, I think that it’s a sign of healing that I don’t really feel the need to go and chase these people down and tell them my side of the story.
If this is the way that they are going to treat me without even hearing my side of the story, well, then, just to hell with them, really. I don’t want to work with them if that is who they are. I just don’t. To hell with them, like, really.
Okay, this is a bad sign right here, this 902 track has a parked, long freight train in it. So, that means that the #2 is either going to be diverted somewhere else through the yard or it’s not coming here at all any time soon. I guess that I forgot about Amtrak Julie telling me about the service disruption, or I didn’t properly interpret it when I heard it. That’s a whole long train.
Thursday, May 9th
Ten years ago today, I was in New Orleans taking final exams at the end of my first semester at the Community College, and I took some pictures of trains and made the “Foamy Finals Friday” blog post. I was already frontin’ back then, frontin’ hard, still thinking that I was going to make a music video.
Something that I forgot to mention before, I can’t remember what day it was, it definitely wasn’t last night, and it probably wasn’t the night before, probably Monday evening or afternoon, I listened to that Godsmack album IV. It was the first time that I listen to that album in a really long time, and it brought back memories of that time and that Idaho trip that I took and just what my frame of mind was in the summer of 2006, living in that apartment, finishing that Katrina school year, thinking about going to work for BNSF out west somewhere, thinking about a couple of railroad-enthusiast-railroader friends, and I think that that was when one of them was doing his tours of the BNSF Railway system as a management trainee.
I think about that often. I don’t know, but I want to listen to that old Godsmack album again.
Friday, May 10th
I am just humiliated; I am trying to not cry right now. I am homeless.
Gosh, Johnston Street is depressing, and I have to keep treating it like it is my place now.
Anyway, man, this headache is powerful. Maybe the caffeine is wearing off. I am not that hungry, really, because I just now ate the last of the three turkey wraps that I brought with me today. I need to make some more now. I will try to eat a salad, I guess, with some fried onions and the last of those tomatoes.
Saturday, May 11th.
I want to be free, and something that I have kind of realized in all of my discussions about UBI, which slightly precede the discovery that I am autistic, and I already knew this, but there is no such thing as a secure job for an autistic person, unless it’s like in your family business, because we are unwilling and unable to do the things…. okay, what I realize is what it means to be independently wealthy is very different for an autistic person than what most people think when they hear the term “independently wealthy”.
To me, the thing that I have always wanted is not to live lavishly. I don’t want to live lavishly. When you think of someone who is “independently wealthy”, you think of rich people living lavishly, but that’s not really independently wealthy. I would not mind living a lower-middle-class lifestyle for the rest of my life if it was just secure, like, here you go, healthcare is covered, and here is $2,000 or whatever per month; you have a small house, and here is some cash. Okay. And I would still probably do some paid employment, because, like almost anyone, I definitely want to do more than just subsist, I like to work, just not all the damn time, and I would be able to stand up for myself, walk away, or get fired. That is what attracted me to UBI in the first place, because I felt controlled by this, and this is not illegitimate, I don’t think, even though plenty of counselors would pathologize this.
Okay, I need resources in order to live, so, okay, so, I don’t live in a small group of hunter gatherers with my family where we can just go out into nature and grab those things for ourselves, and I don’t live as a subsistence farmer like most of my great-grandfathers were, where I could just go outside and work without anyone standing between me and work and food.
And, now that I am deeper into autism discourse, my way of thinking gets pathologized, whereas the people doing the pathologizing, their way of thinking does not. The counselor would never think of herself as someone to be pathologized.
Like, I want to do work, I am able to do work, I am willing to do work, but I don’t deal well with predatory dudes.
There was a post on Twitter about how you should be yourself so that the people looking for you can find you, and she said that she took a long time to understand that attracting people by being something that you’re not forces you to keep up an exhausting facade that you can’t possibly maintain through life’s ups and downs, and losing people just because of being yourself is a pain like no other.
Yes, but, in order to survive, in order to get the resources that you need in order to live, you have to have that facade, but it helped me also realize, I actually realized that only after my teacher burnout, because that is when it became really apparent that I was really just trying to be me and that that was totally incompatible with jobs, but it also helped me to realize that that is a big part of why I miss that part of my life when I was a successful teacher so much, because I felt like I could…, I’ve never had another job where I felt like I could really by myself, even though I wasn’t really being myself, because I didn’t really know myself back then.
How do you get married and have children if you’re not independently wealthy? How do people do that? How do people just go and comply every day? No, I did not ask how people go and work every day! Work is not my problem. I can do work. Work is good. I am able and capable of working. It’s the whole perpetual compliance thing, not of selling your labor but of selling your personality and your identity. It’s that whole playing the status/hierarchy game crap, and that’s why I have been begging KSJ to get this thing going. I need to be free.
The aging process doesn’t stop when you have to stop for years to recalibrate and figure things out, but the reason that I might not know that I am autistic and might not understand the world in the way that I now understand it is that I learned that I was autistic due to a frictuous social situation that stemmed from my income situation falling apart, due to this hostile allistic world.
Now, here is another question: had I not found out that way that I am autistic, is there another way that I would have found out? I don’t know; I figure that there kind of has to be, but I don’t know. It’s difficult to know. That was way back in 2016.
I think that something else is going on that is contributing to my very recent depressive state. It’s a pattern that I am seeing. It’s because of the time of the year that it is, mid May, and two things are happening in mid May: the weather is getting warmer, and it is graduation time. I figured it out only in the last year or two. It helped me make sense of a feeling that I had during the latter part of my good years as a school teacher, because I have heard autistic people say that we are mourning the life of which we were deprived, and I remember graduations that I attended, not just the ceremony itself but everything leading up to it, like the atmosphere, the mood, that time of the year at school with the seniors leaving, and I remember feeling jealous of the graduates.
Why would I feel jealous of them? I already did what they did; I already did that, but it’s also like I didn’t. I can’t really make sense of this; I just know that that feeling is there. I remember feeling it years ago.
Maybe one reason for it is that they were some of the most powerful connections that I have ever made with people in my life, and they were leaving me, because I am unable to make – or am prevented from making – powerful connections in other ways, again, in order to defend myself, I will say not just unable to but sort of prohibited from due to the expectations of society.
Was I really jealous of the people who were graduating and who were not going off to college and who would just be getting a boring job in the area? not really; I was jealous of those going off to college, going off to college, like leaving the metro area. I think that I was jealous of the relative ease and, more specifically, contentedness with which some of them got regular jobs like, say, dental hygienist.
But even if I had gone “off to” college like I have often said that I wish that I would have, I think that I still would have felt that feeling.
There is a feeling that I had back then that I have never been able to fully shake that I would keep doing things that were bigger and better than what I had done before, that everything built on some previous accomplishment, because, up until a certain age, that was basically true. I was on this upward trajectory.
I think now that it’s this autism thing wherein I generally cannot get acceptance into social groups laterally. I can’t. That never has worked for me, at least not for the long term, because, eventually, someone will be hostile to my needs, and, until recently, I wasn’t good at advocating for myself. So, in order for me to avoid being shunned by society and become destitute, I have to be this kind of bigshot, this kind of like rockstar thing. It’s either that or destitution, I guess, because I never have been in an autistic group.
Maybe this is why I feel comfortable with the Church people, because everything is lateral. It’s the only kind of relationship that I have with people wherein things aren’t hierarchical. They just kind of treat me like a person, and I cannot imagine a situation with them like the situation with April.
So, yeah, I am still trying to make sense of that feeling of jealousy; like, there is this unease that I feel looking at pictures of graduations. I feel bad that I didn’t go to my own college graduation. I should have. I skipped out of it because I was inheriting my father’s cynical attitude about it, even though his was earned.
I think that one reason that I didn’t is that, by the time that graduation had happened, I was student teaching for almost half of a year; so, I was removed from the college setting, and I felt like it. Perhaps there were some other reasons that I didn’t go. I don’t really remember. I just kind of wasn’t interested in going, but I should have been interested in going, if for no reason other than the social connections.
I guess that I didn’t like the idea of getting dressed up in a cap and gown in May and all of that. I might have been cynical of people trying to make money off of caps and gowns, like the Who’s Who books that that organization tried to sell me.
Anyway, so, I am wondering what it means that I had this unease about graduation. What does it mean?
That’s why I got into UBI ideology, because, no, you can’t just be in your own family, you can’t just work for your own family in modern society. You get to have a family only if you permanently comply in a labor market of strangers. So, nobody really has autonomy except for very rich people, and their autonomy depends upon the dispossession of everyone else.
I don’t want to be like I am, which is an awful thing to say, but I say it not because of an inherent dislike of myself but because the way that I am makes life difficult – or the way that society is hostile to people who are like I am makes my life difficult (sometimes, it’s difficult to know which one it is.) I really have thought today and the last couple of days of why I was so attracted to UBI in the first place and why I think that Scott Santens and Andrew Yang and all of their minions have just crapped on the concept.
Tuesday, May 14th
I went to New Iberia this morning for that autism assessment thing, but I really shouldn’t be doing that. Thankfully, it was canceled. There was this annoying dude in that 10×10 waiting room in the back. He talked so damn, loud, and, then, he went inside of an examination room, closed the door, and you could still hear him loud and clear. It’s like, damn, why am I the one who gets pathologized one?
I have been awake since about 02:00, reading about Van Halen on Wikipedia, again. Once again, I am thinking about Van Halen more than I am listening to its music; that’s strange. That’s just the role that it played in my life.
I went to the gym yesterday and had a good chest-shoulders-triceps workout. I did 225 pounds on the decline bench press. After that, I could lift only 185 pounds on the incline bench press, but that is not bad. I say “only” 185; I did four of them. But that is not like the 205 pounds that I did two summers ago.
It’s not a coincidence that, when I returned to Louisiana after six months of being away, I had a renaissance of railroad photography that lasted for slightly more than a year, not at all a coincidence, because, prior to going to going away, for about a year, I had been in kind of lull, after the big travels of summer of 2009, I did very little railroad photography at home, in Lafourche Parish and Terrebonne Parish or New Orleans. I made that New Iberia trip, I made several KCS Gulfport Subdivision trips, and, then, there was the New England Quebec Ontario trip with Dad. In December of 2010 and January 2011, knowing that I was about to leave for a while, I notched it up locally a bit, with some good local train pictures from that time.
Friday, May 17th
I went to the event tonight. It was a good experience except for one thing, which is that I walked in there and music was blasting painfully loudly, and I had to ask people to turn it down, and I am thinking, okay, is that normal at this place?
Supposedly, the place gets busy after we leave, and, of course, that would mean that it is a place where a whole bunch of people come and have music blasted right at them and, supposedly, try to have conversations. That is a pretty terrible place, a place that is not accessible to me, because, at the beginning, I almost left this event.
It felt important to be regarded the way that I was at the meeting last night. The organizer did plenty to make me feel included, which I appreciate.
With the music so loud, I was like, okay, this is a forced-disclosure thing. That’s part of what got me upset. It wasn’t just the sensory assault, and it wasn’t even just that it was about to prevent me from participating in this event; it was… I am thinking like, okay, why are you holding such an event in a place like this in the first place? I am curious about how that came to be determined, because, if I never go back inside of that place again, that’s fine. I didn’t like that restaurant. It’s more that forced disclosure, accessibility, that kind of thing. So.
Today – Saturday, May 18th
Okay, finally, here we are on today’s big, picture-filled, emotional outing!
Yes, today was a big day, but I woke up this morning not thinking that I was going to make this outing!
The weather forecast for today was partly cloudy all day, with temperatures up in the mid-80s in the afternoon. Tomorrow, it will be hotter and drier. Summer is here, even though, yes, its spring for another month.
So, the brutality is here. I might get some shot processing done in the mornings over the next few whatever. I want to leave behind more than just train pictures. I wish that I was like Myron Wright.
It was humid out there early this morning.
So, someone couldn’t return to the homeland today, which led me to wonder if I should go by myself, but that idea itself raises some questions.
That wondering meant that, at 09:44 CDT, I left the house, in my truck while wearing a button-downed, long-sleeve shirt, and a tie. I was going to the funeral by myself, I had my camera equipment, and I was most excited about just getting out for the day. I had cabin fever. So, here we go.
I didn’t want to see these people, but I also don’t like them. I don’t want to have the embarrassment or shame of me being in my situation, but I also don’t like them, so, in theory, should not care what they think, and that’s not irrational, because that is the way that the whole thing works in the first place. It’s the power that they have over you and the harm that they can cause, but the main way that I rationalized coming here, beside the fact that I want to get some train pictures, especially of the Union Pacific Railroad local train, afterward, is that, at some point, I am going to have to see these people again, and the longer that I go since the last time that I saw them to the next time, whatever that next time is, the more difficult that that next time will be.
So, this is a bit of exposure therapy in the form of attending a funeral back home; in fact, I think that that is a good title for today’s blog article, because I am doing basically a form of exposure therapy.
Damn, it was bring shortly before 10:00; there weren’t many clouds in the sky. That’s not good, because I was hoping to stop and shoot a picture of the Amtrak Sunset Limited along the way, like maybe off of the overpass at the Bayou Sale siding. I might get lucky right there.
Yeah, these are people whom I am going to have to see at some point. I might as well just do the exposure-therapy thing and just go see them now. I will try to avoid all of them; I will, but, even if I am in the same room as they are, and if they know that I am there and I know that they are there, I think that that is going to help me.
My primary motivation for this outing is that I have cabin fever and want to chase the UP local train westbound just as I did two years ago today.
Oh, crap! I left my little ice chest with stuff to eat in it. I guess that it’ll be okay. I am not going back, but I also don’t have any athletic shoes with me. I meant to bring crocs. I don’t have them. I forgot them. I had been thinking about wearing the crocs because it might be rainy this afternoon. All that I have is a pair of flip flops and those boots that I bought when I started working at the prison.
The only thing that is in that ice chest that could spoil is the blueberries, but I think that those cooler things will keep them fresh enough. I had already planned to get food at like the Taco Bell in Mathews. Now, I may have to get more.
So, definitely, what I have to remember today is to lay off of caffeine; well, maybe it’s that I need to eat more. I don’t have the ice chest, and I don’t have the crocs. I will be okay; I will just have to eat additional food.
I went over the Midland Branch on Highway 90 at 10:07 and saw no train movement there, which was no surprise.
I called Amtrak Julie to see what is up with the #1. At 10:35, just after I passed the Centerville exit, the #1 was scheduled to depart Schriever at 10:46, which made me wonder if I could get to Chacahoula in time to shoot it; that would be a bit of a stretch, but that would be the perfect place to shoot it.
There was a train in the siding at Bayou Sale, but I couldn’t tell which direction it was, because I could not see power on either end, because I could not see either end, but I suspect that it is a westbound train, because one end of the train was under the shade of the overpass, and maybe those guys are getting some shade – and maybe some sleep.
The sky was getting weird. It’s partly cloudy. There are those high cirrus clouds and, also, dark cumulus clouds.
There were military trucks moving on the highway here. It’s weird. What is this? It makes me think that I would have felt out of place in the military and would not have done well in the military. I don’t know.
I crossed the Wax Lake Outlet at 10:39.
Yeah, I am going to need a pretty solid meal after the funeral, I was thinking.
Yeah, I need to ask that question about autistics in the military. My PDA would have been a big problem in the military.
Just before 10:56, I crossed Bayou Boeuf, pressing on the accelerator. Amtrak Julie had finally said that the #1 was in the station at Schriever; so, the best place around here to get a shot is Chacahoula; I knew that I was probably not going to make it, but none of the other shot possibilities around here are worth doing anyway.
The sun was coming back out; so, the light wasn’t good for anything other than the Chacahoula shot, and it’s not great even for the Chacahoula shot. That’s it; I didn’t have time to mess around with this train, and I was just looking forward to this being done with. I was looking forward to the funeral being done, too.
I should have stopped at Amelia. At 11:03, the train passed me shortly after I got off Highway 90 at the Gibson exist. So, so much for that idea. I was not going to chase it, even if I could get ahead of it somewhere. So, that train was really boogieing after it left the station.
So, that settles that, which is kind of good, really; the light wasn’t that great, it was kind of a crazy idea, except that it wasn’t because I was here, and so was the train. Okay, so, now, I know that if I am in like in Amelia in the same time that Julie says that the train is in the station, I am not making it to Chacahoula or even West Gibson in time to catch the train, but that latter shot is lame, as is the Boeuf shot. Maybe I could do the Amelia shot, which is what I should have done, but I would have had to have waited out there for a while in this heat while wearing a button-downed shirt and a tie.
There is some corn growing right here! Wow!
This reminds me of the time that I photographed a train after Marie Ory’s funeral, except that it was cold that day and that I photographed the train after the funeral.
Okay, good old Chacahoula looks like Chacahoula. I definitely damn sure would not want to live here, definitely, although there are worse places, even around here, to live than in Chacahoula, because at least there are trains in Chacahoula, even if they don’t stop.
Oh, wow, what is going on over here? There is a big tree-clearing project to the east of that building that was an old gasoline station.
I turned onto the onramp of Highway 90 at 11:57, and, while I was on that onramp, a bird died, probably, by colliding with my automobile as it was flying. I saw it plop into the grass behind me, poor bird, and it reminded me of that squirrel that died when I was chasing what I thought was the last Abbeville Branch train but what was the second-to-last Abbeville Branch train by darting out in front of my automobile, touching me, leading to the theme of and the title of the blog article of that entire experience that day.
Anyway, about 45 minutes later, I was inside of the Church. The MST was there but had not seen or tried to find me.
After I talked to an aunt, the son saw me. He is doing okay. The funeralized was 96 years old; so, this is not a big surprise or shock. I talked to the spouse, who looked good, standing up with no support, just standing up on his/her own, and the person recognized me right away. So, that was good.
The older granddaughter, the one with the black hair, looked right at me and didn’t say or do anything. So, maybe she didn’t recognize me. I saw the surviving sibling but didn’t say anything to her. I don’t think that she saw me.
At 11:47, before the services started, I was thinking that I could actually just leave now and not attend the funeral, because I came here and did the main things that I needed to do, which was to show my face to a few persons and say hi to them and send my regards to them, but, then, if I left right now, what would I do with it being as hot as it is? Bill’s house is a little bit out of the way. I could go to Five Guys. I thought, too, when I went through Gray that, if I am going to go to Taco Bell, to go to the one there, because I have a history there.
I stayed for the services and am glad that I did. The service ended at 12:43. It was kind of an emotional experience for all of the reasons that I expected. I managed to get out of there without any encounter with anyone of The Klan, though I am pretty sure that at least some in The Klan knew that I was there.
But the most significant thing that happened to me there was that Karen – I had forgotten her name until I heard someone call her by her name after she had talked to me – came up and talked to me. I really appreciated that she came talk to me.
She said that she had seen me in the back just kind of hanging around, wondering why, and she asked me, “how are you doing? You doing all right?” and I was like, no. She asked me that again after, like, when she first saw me, she was like, “how are you doing?” and I was like mehhhh, what about you? how are you doing? And then she said something for a while but then asked me again “how are you doing? are you doing okay?” to which I replied, “no; that is why I am changing the subject and asking you how you are doing,” and she was like “awwwww”, and she didn’t pry into why, but I appreciated just that.
A few hours later, just before the headlight for the train that I would photograph later in the day came into view, I was realizing that Karen, even though she apparently respected me, what she actually saw my mask. She doesn’t know me. I think that that’s a really critical point. She saw my mask. She doesn’t actually know me. She knows things about me that are important but still somewhat superficial, like that I was a teacher and all of that. I think that one of the reasons that she respects me is that I was someone who was really into the history of our family and all of that.
So, good, I did everything right so far today, except for catching the #1, and, of course, when I got to the church, I realized that, no, I was not late; I was kind of early. So, I could have stopped at Amelia and got that shot, or I could have shot it on the Greenwood Bridge. I don’t think that I have ever shot an Amtrak train from the Greenwood Bridge; the only passengerish train that I have photographed from that bridge is the SP 745 pulling the Louisiana Bicentennial Train in April 2005.
Driving around after the funeral, I was thinking that this place has gotten kind of depressing, which is a predictable result of the apparent degradation caused by subsidence that is not replenished due to the periodic overflowing of river water. So, here we are in a place where people really shouldn’t be living, at least not in these numbers and in residences on slabs.
I crossed Bayou Lafourche at 12:53. There is that Quizno’s right there. I was tempted to go there and eat, initially rejected the idea, and then realized that, actually, that wouldn’t be a bad breakfast.
So, yeah. So, the priest said that the funeralized loved life, and it got me to thinking about some things, like, okay, what would they say about me? Did I love life, or not?
My experience of life wasn’t always good, my experience of living wasn’t great, but there is so much of life that I have liked and felt fascinating. I don’t know. I’ll think about that some more.
I went into the Quizno’s and ate a 12″ turkey-bacon guacamole on wheat bread and a bag of Cheetos, and a questionable dude form high school was inside of there, and that led me to, I don’t know, thinking plenty of things.
I thought about walking out when I saw him but then realized that I should stay my course. For one thing, I figured that I’d be able to deflect if he talked to me, and the other thing is that I figured that I’d be able to evade the detection, and I think that I did. For all that I know, he may have seen me and recognized me and just didn’t want to talk to me; I doubt it, though.
What’s funny is that, some years ago, when I were more confident and also naiver, I might have approached him in there.
His presence there made me think of that bullying post from a few days ago, and the reason that I think of that is that, actually, if he had talked to me, he probably would have been very cordial, because he is about 44 years old, and it got me to thinking about how I had heard when we were in high school that his father had been like a big jerk and a fraternity guy but was like a physician and all of that, and it got me to thinking that I was thinking even back then, okay, how are they nice as adults but raising these kinds of people?
So, that is what I am thinking that he probably is now. He could be really cordial and cool with me, but he may be raising the kind of people who make the lives of people like me hell. I wonder where that is going.
Coming northbound on Highway 308 at 13:30, I looped around on Sugar Mill Road to check out that area, came south on Sugar Street, and took Farm To Market Road back to the highway.
I saw that that last road was renamed “Gheens Shortcut Road” in some places. I guess that that is what people are calling that now.
I wanted to just drive back here. I hadn’t bene there in years. I just want to see what it is like. This place is very different than it was when I was photographing trains here 20 years ago back when there still were trains here. There is still a track, but it is overgrown, and, of course, when I was photographing trains there 20 years ago, this place already was quite different than what it was 20 years before when there was an active sugar refinery there. The big drying house is still here. I like that old structure. This place looks the same. Dad talks about delivering bread back there.
Wow. There are all of these big houses on what was Farm To Market Road, and I am going to still call it that. Oh, there is a sign right there that says Farm To Market Road. Le Tour Boulevard. Damn golf course. I hadn’t been back there in probably 10 years at least. There are no crossbucks there anymore. There is still a track, though. There are still rails in the ground.
I was still dressed in the funeral clothes, still dressed in a jet-black pants and a button-down long-sleeve shirt and a tie. I thought about changing my clothes in Quizno’s, but, on the off chance that Rich says that he can meet today, it was good that I was still dressed the way that I was.
I am hearing that song, that relatively new Seether song that I keep hearing on YouTube, “Liar”.
There was a guy walking in the sidewalk on Highway 308 just south of the Houma Road wearing a “Vietnam Veteran” baseball cap backwards, and I was thinking that he looks like he is a little bit too young to be wearing such a cap.
This place looks so run-down and decrepit. It’s so sad. I think about this often. It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s Monetarism and Neoliberalism that cause this.
Next, I went to the Raceland Proper, where there are the usual hopper cars there, four cars there, whoopty-do. I kept going east and saw six potash hopper cars on the stub, and those are the only cars on the stub. There are one or two tank cars spotted at the sugar mill.
By MTI, there is a hopper car that appears to be on the end of the wye track, because it appears to be on an angle. There are a couple of those short, two-bay cars at MTI. So, it still does get business.
It wouldn’t be too long before the UP local train comes through here. I imagined that Melodia was too muddy to go and check out, but I wasn’t sure.
At 13:43, I was driving eastbound on Highway 182 east of Raceland as I have done so many times in my life, trying to hold on to my New Orleansness, thinking about how much I did it in 2018 and 2019 and how utterly futile it was, utterly futile.
Nothing has changed at Kraemer Road since I was here in December. There was no headlight to the east. This place looks sad and decrepit as it did before. I don’t know; maybe it’s not sad that nature is reclaiming the fields. Yeah, maybe that is not sad.
I went back west and was sad about that scar on the landscape that is that oil terminal. It’s so sad.
I appreciate what Karen did. I appreciate the way that she treated me.
By the post office on Mississippi Street, it’s so sad that this old railroad building or whatever this is was being dismantled.
I then heard the “If It Isn’t Love” song 102.9 FM, and it brought back some memories. It made me think of my oldest cousin and all of my cousins on my paternal side, and it made me think autistically that my perception of how I am supposed to be, was influenced not just by my schoolmates but also by those cousins; all of them knew pop culture better than I did, but the one who had the biggest influence on me had this crassness that I detected even by then as being “critical”, but I am critical.
A few minutes later, I turned off at Melodia just to check out the road and the shot. The road looked okay, but the grass here was rather thick.
While I was there, I heard that “Don’t Leave Me” song by Blackstreet on the radio, and, daaaamn, that brought back some memories.
The memories that I got form hearing that song are not happy, but what is critical here is that, had I heard this song back in 2009, I would have thought that it was cool, “oh, back in the day”, and, now, what I am thinking about when I hear the song is that exclusion, that feeling of not fitting in, the lack of belonging. It’s a nice song, but that’s completely beside the point.
I heard from Rich. He couldn’t meet today. So, I can get out of the dress clothes.
I left Melodia and was passing through this nice area where, a long time ago, I thought that I should live, this area on the eastern bank of the bayou north of Lafourche Crossing. There is too much traffic here.
I could stop at the Laurel Valley store, but today is not a good day to do that.
I went to Schriever via Percy Brown Road. I entered Terrebonne Parish at 14:10. So, that is the second time that I enter Terrebonne Parish today.
Oh, I need to check to see if Stephanie Rodrigue is still alive. I need to check for an obituary. If she would be alive, she would be at least around 80 years old. It’s weird how someone who thought so highly of me became a Clay-Higgins-supporter, which is to say that it’s weird how someone who thought so highly of me would choose to endanger me and people like me. It makes me feel so sad.
In Schriever, I saw the LDRR 1717, which is, now, pretty much my favorite locomotive on the Louisiana & Delta Railroad roster, and I don’t think that I have seen it before. It’s on its usual track, and it is coupled to a loaded centerbeam flatcar just as the LDRR 1850 was one year ago today. The car is IANR 624472, which makes me wonder if this is actually a CN load, and, on the Houma Branch track, there is an empty centerbeam flatcar, LRS 3712.
The little Amtrak waiting area has been wrapped up in some kind of boarding, preventing access to it. Perry says that the same thing happened with the one in New Iberia. I do not know why.
ATSF 199464 is a crane in the house track, as is flatcar BNSF 931003 with a build date of January 1969.
The storage track on the eastern side is pretty full of cars, almost entirely tank cars with one or two hopper cars near the western end, which I guess means that they are pickups.
So, what do I do now? That’s a good question. I changed my clothes. I took off the dress clothes and put on flip flops, those new cargo shorts, and that new light-greenish pullover, collared, short-sleeve shirt with green and white stripes.
Okay, let me get out of here. So, where am I going now? That is the question. Oh, I need to get gasoline; that’s a good thing to do now. I went to the old standby of GoBears, but all of the pumps are covered. What is going on here?
Since I am going to kill time, and since I am going to Thibodaux to do it, maybe I will get gasoline in Thibodaux itself, rather than at one of these gasoline stations at the other end of Schriever here. Whatever.
There is Barry LeBoeuf’s house.
There is some maintenance equipment parked on the western storage track near the west end of the yard west of the North Main Project Road crossing.
The Briggs And Stratton place shut down, with grass very much overgrown.
I passed by some baseball happening and that Scott Sanders place, and it made me anxious. Yes, seeing kids playing baseball makes me anxious, which is kind of sad.
I wish that I knew more about everything; it’s because I love life! I want to know more! I just don’t love the way that I have been living, or the way that life has been treating me. I love life more than life loves me; that’s the god’s honest truth right there.
I love life more than life loves me. It’s really true.
I love life more than life loves me.
I love life way more than life loves me.
Oh, Ross Esteve is a real estate agent, according to a sign that I just saw.
I stopped at the Texaco station, GoBears #11, at the corner of Canal Boulevard and Highway 308 to get gasoline, probably for the first time since I last lived in the area.
I then proceeded to Melodia, and, on the way, I heard “Ariels” by System Of A Down.
At 15:08, I was at Melodia, and, as I would soon see, I really timed this well! It wasn’t terribly hot there.
I didn’t have to wait for long.
Is that a headlight? Is that a headlight off in the distance? I thought, at 15:15, that that was a headlight off in the distance! There we go. I didn’t have to wait for long. My timing was very good!
Now, a question that I have to ask myself even before I see this train is about a decision that I have to make: if this train is not the UP local train, what do I do? Do I sit here and wait for it?
The horn sounded melodious, and it made me think that this was the train that I was hoping that it was.
Okay, here I go, climbing on top of the truck. I kind of look good, too. It’s interesting; I wonder how I would have looked had I showed up a year ago for this funeral, 35 pounds heavier.
The engineer was doing a Long-Long-Short pattern, without the traditional long after the short; he did it at least twice. A year ago right now, maybe slightly later in the day, I was out here shooting that train with the Canadian Pacific Railway locomotive leading the train.
The grass is a little bit too high here, but I am already here. I am going to have to make a post that says, hey, BNSF, can you please kill this grass?
It’s not too hot. There is a breeze out here, because this is wide open and flat.
That’s it! That looks like the UP local train.
I love it!
This is a real treat.
I counted 33 cars. That locomotive was really struggling.
I really timed that perfectly. I really did.
When I left Melodia, that “Say It Aint So” song by Weezer was playing on 92.3FM, then the DJ, a woman, said something about May being Mental Health Awareness Month and that she takes anxiety medications, which is a new thing to hear on a rock station like this. There always has been so much crassness in the contemporary music world, and that bothered me even when I was a kid. That just bothers me. She said that right before the Papa Roach “I’ll leave the light on for you” song played.
That’s a cool-looking little train, too. Oh, no, he’s going to stop at Boeuf, I thought. I could stop and get some food in Morgan City, I thought, but that’s not a good idea; I’d be doing it just to kill time.
Okay, I actually could beat this train to Chacahoula, I thought. I will try to do that.
That was pretty good!
At 15:34, I am driving southbound on Percy Brown Road for the second time today, now chasing the UP local train. The problem here is that the train has a much-more-nearly-direct path to Schriever than I have.
At 15:35, I entered Terrebonne Parish again for the third and last time today, a little bit hungry, but it didn’t matter. I could damn sure have used those blueberries and those Power Crunch bars, but I figured that I’ll be okay without them.
On 92.3FM, I heard “All Around Me” by Flyleaf. Then, I heard that song “Good Riddance” which I didn’t realize until now was by Green Day!
I should have taken Ducros Road. I hope that the train has to go into the siding for a meet.
Yeah, the train is not in Schriever; so, I doubt that I’m going to beat him to Chacahoula. The first cars in the train are sand hopper cars, and I have a feeling that he has to stop and set them out again, which will be kind of annoying, because it will be time consuming and eat up precious afternoon light.
I then heard “Hemorrhage” by Fuel.
I was stuck behind a slow pickup truck in Schriever. So, I figured that I would not beat this train to Chacahoula now. So, that means that the next decent shot that I can get of him will be at Boeuf, but that’s a lousy shot, and it’s after he’s probably going to have to do a whole bunch of work at Ursa.
This is making me think that that train a year ago today really did have to meet an eastbound train at Schriever and I just didn’t see it, which would make sense even though I saw it meet an eastbound BNSF Railway train at Schriever, since BNSF tends to run them that close to each other, for some reason.
I got set up at West Gibson just in time to do this lousy shot.
You can see why I rarely ever did this shot.
Yeah, at least I got something.
At 16:03, both the train and I were crossing Bayou Boeuf right, I on the old highway, Highway 182, trying to beat him to the Greenwood Bridge. I knew that it would be close. He should have a 25mph speed restriction through here. I don’t know what the hell is going on here anymore; I am way out of the damn loop.
I was almost certain that he would stop at Ursa to set out those hopper cars, because they were on the front of the train, and that’s what he did two years ago today, but it turns out that that was wrong, and, also, it makes sense, because the train that I saw in New Iberia just two days ago had those cars on the front end. So, I was almost certain that he would stop in Boeuf today, but I also had a doubt based off of more recent information, and maybe those sand cars are for New Iberia, maybe Carbo Ceramics; that would make sense.
Dammit! I got the red light right here on the bypass road. That structure that used to be a McDonald’s that was part of a convenience store appears to have closed. I guess that it closed due to the falloff in business in this area. I am not about the shipyard life; that’s for damn sure.
So, that is good that the train didn’t stop at Ursa, because that would have eaten up precious time, and I wanted to keep moving and get ahead of myself here and get all of this crap behind me.
I had the green light at Bayou Ramos because there is this temporary but long-term traffic light on the old highway here.
I heard a horn. So, I must have been ahead of him, but not by much. This is going to be close. This train was making good time. The signals weren’t activated yet on James Street; so, that was a good sign.
I thought that I would be able to do this with a minute, maybe 30 seconds, to spare.
Okay, here we go, climbing the bridge.
There he is! Ha! Got’em!
I got it!
At this time, I thought that I now had enough pictures from today to make a four-picture montage and to justify doing a one-off post tonight, and I got it in different places than last time so that it would at least be different than the shots that are being posted on the Facebook page today.
So, I ran by the Port Of Morgan City, because I had time now, to see what is there; there were about a dozen hopper cars, the usual kind, there. He was going fast enough to make me think that he must have already had permission to get onto the bridge, but he didn’t.
Okay, Perry said that the train would meet a BNSF Railway train LALNSI that passed around New Iberia around 15-30 before. I imagine that Bayou Sale is where they will meet, or maybe Baldwin. So, that complicated things. That meant that they are probably going to meet at Bayou Sale, which is going to affect my decision making.
The train stopped short of milepost 80, apparently, for the bridge. I figured that this was a good opportunity to get a little bite to eat. Yeah, this is where the blueberries and Power Crunch bars that I forgot at the house would be really helpful.
I went to McDonald’s in Morgan City, which is funny because I got biscuits there a year ago today, and I passed by the Rouse’s, which made me think about Anne, which is like, haha, funny, because I now understand that thing better than I ever did, better than I did in 2012, when I thought that I understood it but did not, because I did not know that I am autistic. All that I was thinking about then was her intense Catholicism.
Anyway, I got two deluxe crispy chicken sandwiches at McDonald’s and immediately returned to the track at the old yard to verify that the train was still there, and, if it was, get some shots of him.
It was there.
The ground-level view here is better than the top-of-the-truck view.
I was thinking just then, don’t I have food with me? and I had forgotten that I have or used to have fruity trail mix in the truck.
Next, at 16:41, I was in Berwick, and the bridge span was now coming down, after a push boat and some barges came through northbound. I ate one of the two crispy chicken sandwiches that I got at McDonald’s, and I started to set up this shot before I would eat the other one.
One thing that I am going to have to do before I get out of town here is determine if this train is going into the siding here. If he is not, I might be able to try some shot at Patterson; I don’t know, it’s probably not going to work.
Here is the first picture that I have taken with the small lens today.
This is a neat place.
This is where seafood boats, mostly shrimp boats, come to dock and unload.
I was thinking – and this is not the first time that I had this thought – that Berwick would not be a bad place to live if not for the fact of living with the consent anxiety that this place is going to be washed away and probably rather abruptly at some point in the future.
So, before I could get to the second sandwich, the train approached and began to slowly cross the bay, and I realized that I had a few opportunities for a good telephoto shot before the front of the train got out of the lift span.
So, I put the telephoto lens back on.
Then, I swapped lenses again, putting the small lens back on for the rest of the pictures from this location.
It doesn’t show much of the train, but it’s interesting.
Really, this is a great place to just watch the train, because it looks cool as it slowly comes off the bridge in a view that is unobstructed.
Next, in Berwick Proper, on the other side of the floodwall, we see an eastbound BNSF train parked on the siding and waiting to meet the local train.
It looked like the BNSF conductor walked out to the switch before the UP train got there, though the UP train stopped anyway, maybe due to procedures and protocols or whatever.
Here comes our train off of the bridge.
The next view, showing the front of the train turning into the siding, may be my favorite shot of the day, if for no reason other than that it is rarer that I get this view than that I get the shot at Melodia or at Schriever.
I really like that. The geometry works well there.
Here is the meet.
Let’s get a few views of the cars.
Damn, I really hate graffiti.
Here is a house next to where I was parked to take these images.
Just as I did one year ago today, I photographed a meet in Berwick from the north side of the track, close to, a half a block away from, where I took the pictures a year ago today. I think that my shot from today is better, though.
So, I am going to try to go and find a shot by Patterson, which may be difficult to do. I was going to try to get the shot from Zug Road, my first Berwick shot from when I started shooting digital almost 19 years ago, but the train beat me there, and he was on the siding anyway, which is why it wouldn’t have worked anyway.
So, yes, that was pretty bountiful. I got a shot of the train at Greenwood, shots of the train at milepost 80, and, then, shots at two views of the train in Berwick.
That was pretty bountiful. So, this day is going pretty well. The thing that I missed is Schriever. I wanted to not only photograph this train at Schriever but also photograph the Louisiana & Delta Railroad locomotive with the lumber car sitting there at Schriever, which I suppose I could have done and still got to West Gibson in time. It would have been close.
As I was coming into Patterson, I didn’t think that this shot was going to work, because the train was on the wrong side of the sun. . . or maybe it would, yeah, maybe at Veterans, it would work.
I had a little bit of time to play with here. So, I could probably bang off a shot here and still make it to Bayou Sale in a decent amount of time. It would be the first time that I shoot pictures here in more than 20 years, and the first time that I do a shot of a westbound train from this crossing.
This may or may not work, I thought.
I could go for a bowl of green beans right now, I thought; man, what a wild and crazy Saturday night it is, woohoo; I guess that this is one of the good things about being old.
Because there is a curve east of the crossing, I decided that I might be better off hanging out on the northern side of the crossing and shooting across the curve like that.
This was a good time to eat that other sandwich. So, I did that, and, just as I was finishing it, I heard the horn. I swapped lenses and mounted the truck.
Yes!!! That was intense!
This shot was way better than I had expected, and it was quite exhilarating in the process, because the train was really accelerating from coming out of the siding, and I was even thinking that, if doing that shot causes me to miss the Bayou Sale shot, that is worth it; that was a good shot.
Okay, I need to slow down. I am still in Patterson. I wonder if Patrick Lasalle is still in charge around here. I don’t know, but that was pretty cool.
Okay, I will try to overtake the train again and shoot it at Bayou Sale. The problem is that I have to do the illegal and semi-dangerous U-turn, specifically given how wet it has been lately, to make that shot, because I don’t have the right footwear on my feet to climb the embankment from the ground-level local roads.
Well, maybe I could; it’s right there in front of me.
This train is really boogieing. I passed its head end right in front of Enterprise Products place, maybe the Calumet gas plant; I don’t know if that’s the same facility.
I needed to figure something out, like, okay, what do I do after the Bayou Sale shot? Moresi Road? might as well. This should be a little bit earlier than the chase a year ago today; so, the light should be better today when this train gets there than the light was when I photographed a train there a year ago today. That train a year ago today was about an hour later than this one is.
If I die while I do this, will someone please make Jimbaux’s last blog post, complete with all of my thoughts throughout the day? and you don’t even have to change the names to protect the, well, I wouldn’t even say “innocent”, because I wouldn’t care, because I couldn’t be harmed by these revelations, and I would want them to happen.
You know, maybe I shouldn’t go to Moresi Road. Maybe I should really try to shoot this thing in New Iberia.
I pondered trying to put socks and shoes on to climb the embankment from the ground-level roads below the overpass, but that would have been impractical, because it would have been too time consuming. So, I am going to have to take the possibly illegal and semi-dangerous usual route to get into position for the shot. The problem is that, especially without a radio scanner, when you’re doing this shot, you always have to approach from the east, which is a problem, because you need to be in the eastbound lanes in order to get to the shot, which would be different if you were coming for the west. I don’t think that I have ever done the shot coming from the west.
Complicating matters was that, as I saw when I approached the overpass from the west, there was already another train at Bayou Sale! Okay, that doesn’t actually complicate anything! It actually simplifies things! It means that I am going to skip this shot; it’s not going to work!
Yeah, that’s the same train from this morning, and he was sitting on the siding; so, he was fouling the shot anyway. So, there you go; we’re not doing the Bayou Sale shot. So, if we’re not doing the Bayou Sale shot, what are we doing? I don’t know.
The sun was too far to the west to do any of these broadside views that are good on cloudy days and in winter, but, in winter, it would be close to dark by now.
I decided that I would do a shot at that road just past the west siding switch at Baldwin.
I took my tablet computer out for the first time today. I hadn’t even checked Facebook since I have been on this trip. I used the tablet computer to find the shot that I would soon do at Borough Lane, a new shot.
I was leading the other team by a couple of touchdowns late in the game; I thought that I could afford to take a little gamble right here.
I decided that I would try to get a broadside shot off of Borough Lane. I had never have been here before. This is new territory for me.
The problem with me doing this shot is that it will make catching up with this train again very difficult.
All right; let’s do this.
That is different! It’s also different while still being good.
Yeah, that’s what I came here to do.
I really like this new shot. What do you think?
I like that blue boxcar. There were some soybeans in the field to the west of here.
That I didn’t have time to stop somewhere and eat while chasing this train is all the more reason that I need to remember to bring my healthy snacks, including celery that I imagined only as I was on this trip.
I then went and checked out Baldwin. Here are the LDRR 1712, the LDRR 3529, and some carbon-black hopper cars.
That is basically a 4×1 aspect ratio. How about that?
Let’s get out of here.
Even though we are away from 92.3 FM, we are starting to get some good songs. A little bit after 18:00 after leaving Baldwin on Highway 90, I heard “Ain’t Talkin’ Bout” love by Van Halen, then some version, maybe a cover version, of “Oh Well” by Fleetwood Mac. It was good. Then, on 99.9FM, I heard “Lonely No More” by Rob Thomas, and, later, on 103.3 FM, I heard “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd. I love that song. I think about so many things due to this song.
I couldn’t even beat the train to the depot in New Iberia from those last shots in Baldwin. That’s how much of a disadvantage that last shot put me at. It was close. I could see the train, could see the crossing gates activating, as I was pulling up on Hopkins Street after I passed Phanat’s house. It’s kind of crazy.
At 18:26, I was in New Iberia at the west siding switch, and I will try to at least get a shot of the train here. Oof, what a day. I am ready for a shower.
Here comes the train.
He will pull up past the west siding switch.
Then, he will shove the train into the siding.
That is a dark-side shot!
It works, though, I guess.
I love that classic EMD profile.
The engineer is getting out to close the switch, and this is how we end today’s set of images.
That’s all for the pictures for today.
The structure northeast of the depot is being dismantled. I had seen that before when I was in town earlier this week. Hey, maybe there could be a railroad customer here, you know!
The LDRR 1536 is on the Midland Branch spur, and in the locomotive tie-up track are, from west to east, are LDRR 1850, LDRR 1852, LDRR 1707, and 1709, as if there are any other reporting marks here anymore.
I am guessing that the reason that the 1536 is here is for inspection, which explains why the 3529 is in Baldwin.
So, I need to get out of here.
It’s almost 19:00. So, the question is, do I go to Walmart first? I don’t really feel like it. The time is 18:52. I can go to Walmart tomorrow. That’s what I am going to do. I am in New Iberia and have too much to do this afternoon, like water my neighbor’s plants, to worry about that. I want to stop at the Dairy Queen, because, if I went to Walmart right now, I’d get out of there at 19:30. I want to be able to process and post a one-off picture from today and still get to bed at my bedtime.
School gives me anxiety, man.
The only thing that I used the tablet computer for on this trip is maps. That’s it. I didn’t check Facebook. I want to wait until I get to the house to do that.
This has been a good day. I got to see a few people, a few cool places, and one really cool train.
The highlight of it was Karen talking to me and talking to the spouse of the deceased, and, then, what after that? Quizno’s and avoiding people all the time, Schriever, checking it out, getting gasoline in Thibodaux, getting a shot of that train in Melodia.
It was pretty bountiful. This is my biggest foaming day of 2024 so far, and, hopefully, it stays that way. I need to figure out what I am going to do in the trip back there later this month.
The electricity for a few traffic lights in New Iberia was out, it seems.
I kind of felt like my old self again. Yeah, in some ways, it’s about proving to yourself that you can still do this, and it’s funny that that guy John asked me last night what I do for fun, because it’s also true that, in some ways, all of this isn’t fun, that it’s like a compulsion. I would rather be building railroads, but, whatever.
So, I showed my face somewhere; that’s a good thing in many ways, but it’s bad in that it reminds them that I exist, which, in some ways, I just don’t want them to do. I don’t want them to think about me. I want them to forget that I ever existed. Also, don’t blame me for avoiding you when you are part of the reason for my trauma, you hate-filled woman.
Recently, the MSL talked about Biden bringing in Palestinians into the United States, and, of course, nothing about Biden slaughtering Palestinians. That was the thing that made me understand that no amount of Democrats equivocating, trying to be conservative, convinces these people. Like, for them, it’s not enough that Biden is killing tens of thousands of Palestinians. They never mention that. They criticize him in the same comment in which they criticize Palestinians. They are just genuinely awful people.
This is an emotional day. It’s the first day in almost six years that I see some people who were critical to my life a long time ago and from whom I have been distanced, both by myself and by my immediate family.
Right now, getting to bed at my bedtime is more important than the off chance that I will be able to photograph a lousy train after what I already have done today.
I may have been the only grandnephew or niece there. There is a pretty decent chance of that.
I am very glad that I made this trip, very glad.
Oh, I was thinking about something in the last couple of days. I was thinking about situations in which I was in late high school and early college, learning how to behave neurotypically so that I knew how to not embarrass myself and knew how to be cool; so, I go and get a new set of friends who don’t know about my past, things with them go okay for a while, and, then, somebody from the past meets my new friends group, and they tell them crap about me, and then the new friends start treating me like the old friends treat me. That’s kind of reductive, but it’s true.
I went to Dairy Queen, because I damn sure earned it. I gorged on it. I don’t foam anymore, especially not like this. I got two of the double flamethrower burgers, along with the large choco-brownie extreme Blizzard. I was just really hungry.
I have eaten nothing but fast food today, and that’s not good, and that’s because I forgot my blueberries and Power Crunch bar.
Also, I also saw no other eastbound train between Berwick and New Iberia, and, with as good of time as that UP train made, there is no way that there could have been another eastbound train out there, I think, I told Perry.
Man, 24 hours ago, I was at That Event, really kind of feeling good for how I was treated. It’s been a heck of a 24 hours; that’s for damn sure. Yeah, I need rest; it’s important that I get my rest. Yeah.
I arrived back at the house at 19:30, ending a memorable, emotional, and intense day.
The quantity of pictures from today is by far the largest quantity of pictures that I have made in one day in 2024. It’s more than double the number of pictures from any other day.
What I accomplished is a welcome sign of my vitality, a sign of my vim and vigor. I was doing stuff that I did 11 years ago or 12 years ago, climbing atop the truck in six places with no problem.
That’s all for now, and that’s a huge relief.
Jim
