My Friend Like Died, While I Struggle To Be Reborn

Jimbaux sees that now there’s a look in your eyes
Like black holes in the sky.

Hi, there.  It’s been a long time, and, with my first pictures in months, I have plenty to say, as a shocking piece of personal news a few weeks ago is, along with some other personal drama that I am addressing, still weighing heavily on my mind.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond?

It’s that time of the year, when my typical summer drought of pictures comes to an end.  For me, the end of September has often been the beginning of the season for chasing and photographing trains, and it coincides with the beginning of sugarcane grinding season, though, this year, I do have several good sets of pictures made in June and July due to unusual circumstances, meaning that my drought since the last set of pictures is less than three months long.

I am going to in part dispense with my usual habit as of late of saying everything that I want to say since the last article only as being part of the dates when I first said those things (usually, to my audio recorder), because sharing such thoughts here isn’t going to work well that way, in large part because, for both topics but, especially, for the first one, I have to word everything vaguely in order to avoid sharing some personal details – in the first and more-dramatic case, of another person.

I still will have some notes for various dates between the last article and now, though.

My Friend Like Died

Late on the evening of September 15^th, I learned some shocking news that left me depressed and blaming myself.  The following afternoon, the 16^th, I discovered additional shocking news on the same topic that didn’t do a huge amount to decrease my depression from the previous night’s news but did do plenty to diminish – dare I even say eliminate – the self-blame that I had from the news.

The subject here is the real end of a very important friendship in my life, a friendship that had been dormant for a little bit more than a decade but that had, in the last two-and-a-half years, been showing signs of a possible renaissance.  It’s a friend whom I have not seen in well over a decade but who was a big, meaningful, and influential part of my life for the decade prior.

I must keep the details scarce, because the former friend is someone whom I know from both of us being intense railroad enthusiasts, and he was quite a prolific foamer.  As is common and natural for friends, even for friends who don’t live hundreds of miles away, we drifted apart a decade ago; there was no argument or disagreement that caused this separation, as it was just a natural function of us living our own lives far apart and not really finding time for each other, especially since my own traveling and foaming had decreased and stayed local at that point.

In early September, I noticed that my number of friends on my personal Facebook profile had gone down by one, and, while I did some brief searching to try to figure out who it was, I was unable to figure out who it was; furthermore, though, I didn’t think anything of it, figuring that it’s either because one of my Facebook friends deactivated their profiles (which, last I checked, causes your friend count to drop) or because someone whom I never knew well in the first place and with whom I had no desire to maintain a friendship but somehow were Facebook friends with the person had finally taken the logical step of deleting me.  (When I first started on Facebook, it was common to add and be added by some person you knew from meeting the person at one party.)

Well, when I had been searching to figure out who it was, I didn’t look in the right place.  It was late in the evening of the 15^th that, by accident, I discovered, to my great shock, that it was someone whom I had considered one of the closest if not the closest friends whom I ever had.  I had felt – and I still feel – that this person and I understood each other in ways that no one else did.  Although this person was, very much like me, a bit of a weirdo, he was nonetheless someone whom I was very proud to claim as a friend, even though, due to the sensitive nature of his own job, neither of us did much to publicly proclaim the other as a friend.  He was, like me, rather secretive, and I suspect that he might be, as I am, somewhat autistic.  Autistic people, like closeted LGBTQ people, tend to be forced to live secretive lives; then, on top of that, his job kind of necessitated it.

Naturally, as an autistic person does, given how society treats us, I blamed myself for him blocking me, wondering exactly what I had done wrong, what I had done to be blocked and removed from his life thus.

On the afternoon of the 16^th, less than 24 hours after I learned the shocking news that he had blocked me, I learned why he may have blocked me, and it was, in its own way shocking.  It was also relieving, because I realized that the answer almost certainly is not anything that I did wrong.  (If I had not learned this other piece of information, shame may have prevented me from mentioning anything about this here at all.)

Furthermore, the answer also revealed something deeper, something of which the idea that I almost certainly did not do anything wrong is, at least in part, a function: I don’t actually want to be friends with the person he is now!

Shockingly, I learned what he had been hiding from me!  The charitable interpretation of what I learned is that he is suffering, perhaps in part due to trauma, a mid-life crisis. So, why did he block me and not some other people?

The best answer to that is one that is the most-self-serving and also most-charitable toward him but one that I just truly think is accurate: I am a mirror to him.  Probably only on a subconscious level, he knows that what he was hiding from me is ridiculous and makes him look ridiculous, he actually agrees, and, as such, couldn’t have even the thought of me as a mirror to the ridiculousness that he has become.  If that is not the answer, then that would be all the more reason that I don’t want anything to do with him!

In the span of one evening, he had gone from being someone whom I had been proud to tell the world was my friend to being someone with whom I wanted no association.

He probably correctly intuited that is how I would feel if I had known what he was hiding from me but not from others.

Though I very quickly wanted no association with who he had become, the pain that nonetheless reverberated from this realization was due to the shock from learning that my friend is not who I thought he was, and, in the date descriptions later in this essay, I will explain why that is far more relevant for this friend than it has been for other situations in my life when I have realized that a friend isn’t who I thought he was.

I Struggle To Be Reborn

Coinciding with the ending of that friendship and realizing that my friend isn’t who I thought he was is my struggle to be reborn after the catastrophic event, starting in 2012, that more or less ruined my life, that definitely destabilized my life.  I don’t know how to connect these two coinciding events, except that, as one trauma exacerbates another, the pain from one of these events exacerbates the other.

Part of this struggle to be reborn is realizing that it is indeed true that I was wronged, because other people are seeing it, and they are telling me that they are seeing it.

I won’t say much more about this here, because I cover it as much as I publicly can in the parts of this essay from the September 29^th and today, due in part to a meeting that I had on the 29^th about this topic with a supportive friend.

So, let’s get started with what happened between the last article and now!

Friday, July 12^th

I went to a meeting at the Church, and, then, after that, I got two Buffalo Ranch Chicken Sandwiches from Whataburger and then ate them at the house.

Sunday, July 14^th

There was an apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump yesterday.  It’s bringing out the bad in plenty of people. I saw Jordy using that famous, iconic picture in his banner photo on Facebook, and that is about right.  Bullies like other bullies.  I will return a few days from now and see who has “Liked” that picture, to see if any familiar names show up.  The Familial Thorn is talking about it on Facebook.  I am thinking about the Edgar house being dismantled.

There are so many possibilities that I’d be able to do if I had better executive functions.

This morning, I ate fried eggs and grits pretty early.  CBS Sunday Morning did not air, because it was preempted by coverage by John Dickerson of the assassination attempt on Trump. 

It’s kind of discouraging to realize that the Democratic Party depends so heavily on votes from people who think in the way that these Biden Bitter Clingers do.  Like, okay, you don’t actually care about beating Trump, apparently.

Yeah, I keep thinking about my fantasies about the Acadiana Railway.  It’s kind of crazy, yeah, in Franklin, build a spur to the sugar mill to collect tank cars of molasses and collect bagasse, and, while we are at it, build a spur from that spur toward the Walmart and the Super 1 Foods place so that we can unload boxcars, mostly of groceries, and flatcars, mostly of building materials; hey, maybe we could even put a rolling ramp, I guess that you could call it, there.  Saint Mary Parish can buy some new school buses, and they can all come in there.  That would be neat.  Garbage trucks, concrete trucks, you name it.

I wonder who controls the Charenton Canal drawbridge and where it is controlled from.  It would be interesting to find out.  It would be interesting to see it double-tracked again.  Imagine that.

Monday, July 15^th

Today started much better than yesterday did.  I got up earlier.  I managed to make the computer folders for the pictures, the SLR-camera pictures, that I have taken this month and put the appropriate pictures in them, then transfer them to the main external hard drive, and, then, copy them from there to the big desktop computer.

I need to get paid.  I also need to send my big lens off to be repaired.

I keep thinking of my fantasy world of railroad-business expansion.

I am just spooked by all of the pro-bullying content out there in the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump and just the weakness of the purportedly anti-fascist response to it.

Sunday, July 21^st

I keep thinking about my little Franklin spur to the sugar mill and team track or unload track by the stores.

Oh, April contacted me to inquire about using my likeness for the Guild, and it’s like, no; I need to tell her.  Verily I say unto you, whatever it is that you do to the least of these, you do unto me.

I went to Burger King last night, and, once again, I had to deal with that stupid crap of “do you want the sandwich or … ?”  I said that I wanted the Texas Double Whopper.  I said that I wanted the Texas Double Whopper!  Like, dammit!  I just told you!  It’s so condescending to ask me if I want the combo or the sandwich when I just literally told you that I want the sandwich.

Anyway, pass the torch, Joe.

People are dumb as rocks.

I have so much to do.  Life is going nowhere.  I don’t know what to do.  I have to stop eating fast food.  I need to get back to the gym.  I don’t really look bad, though, for someone who hasn’t been to the gym in three weeks.  Not only have I not been to the gym in three weeks, but I haven’t even done any workouts at the house; like, I haven’t done pushups or situps or curls or goose steps at the house, and my weight has been pretty stable at 170 pounds.  That’s good.

Friday, July 26^th

At 06:16, I was feeling kind of alive this morning in a way that I have not in a while, and that is very much a qualified, nebulous “a while”.  I awoke before 05:00 and did some computer-internet stuff this morning before starting this walk.

It was also relatively cool this morning.  There is a weird cool spell happening now.  It’s not really hot and humid right now.  I will take this, definitely take this. 

Saturday, July 27^th 

People are just idiots.  “Mouth breathers”, Moira Donegan said that, what a gross, ableist trope.

Yeah, I need to go to the gym.  I do.

There are the bugs.  Right before I went out for my morning walk, I put bug spray on for the first time this year.

I need to send my big lens in for repair.  I have so much to do.  Maybe now I can get it done since I am not sleeping so damn much.

I was thinking that I could photograph the eastbound Sunset Limited coming through Lafayette soon.  We shall see.

Sunday, July 28^th

I weigh 170 pounds, less than I weighed yesterday morning before I ate two hours later.  So, I don’t know what that is about, because I ate pretty decently yesterday.

When I was making the scheduled postings on Facebook for August 2009, I had to look up about the terrible British Columbia fires of 2021.  They were bad.  So, that took some time.

Church is very interesting.  Facebook has changed my life.

I miss the INOLB.  I miss Airslide hopper cars.  Oh, I was looking up Airslide hopper cars on the tablet computer last night, I think about the time that I fell asleep.

I made tea early yesterday morning.  I did buy a new electric kettle, but I haven’t opened it yet.  Maybe I should do that today.

Monday, July 29^th

I want to go home so badly.

My left elbow is like really sore.  So, something happened there.  That is not good, joint pain or something; I guess that it’s age related.

Then, I went to Walmart and bought stuff, including plenty of tomatoes, and, because there was not a sufficient amount of the usual barbecue chicken tenders, I bought chicken wings.  I don’t think that I have ever bought Walmart wings before.  Then, I came to the house and ate that, then did some stuff out in the yard like picking bell peppers, then took a shower and shaved.

Looking at a trailer hitch on some truck reminded me that I need to talk to KSJ about the business.

Friday, August 16^th

There are plenty of Facebook postings today, because five years ago today, I did an Abbeville Branch chase, and one year ago today was the day that I took and passed the test for the license and then got a few shots when I was out along the way.

I want to get out of here.  I want to go home, man.  I just want to go home. 

You can’t go home, man.

Friday, August 23^rd

I keep seeing posts about this Holy Trinity Academy in Schriever.  Learning more about it, I see that it is a Chesterton Academy, which is sort of a new version of a Catholic School, kind of reactionary in its own way, but it was also designed to keep people who grew up as Catholics as Catholic.

I wish that I could have gotten that adjunct instructor job.  I guess that, now, I am not going to get it.  It’s late August, and I haven’t heard from anybody. 

Tuesday, August 27^th

I was reading about Ted Kennedy and Scott Brown and that whole thing on Wikipedia this morning when I couldn’t sleep.

Oh, I wrote to B on Sunday, trying to figure out what is up with our friendship, and I have heard nothing.  Oh, well.  I give up.   I tried, and I give up.  It really does make me feel bad.

A few days ago, I started working on pictures again, pictures from November. 

Wednesday, August 28^th

In my dreams last night, I encountered B somewhere, and she told me some things that I did wrong that seemed to be fictitious.  I didn’t remember what they were, but they seemed to be things that didn’t happen in real life.  She hasn’t responded to my message from Sunday.  It hurts so bad that that friendship is over.  That really hurts.  That seriously hurts bad, because of the reason that she and I became friends in the first place is precisely because of autism.

I chopped jalapeños yesterday, but that is not much.

Thursday, August 29^th

I have gotten into the habit of saving pictures just as the file number and “RGB” with the intention to return later to put the full file name, to reduce the risk that my filenames are too long.

I keep thinking about K.

I should have been an architect.

Friday, August 30^th

This morning, I transferred a bunch of files to the hard drives and all of the pictures, including montages, from November 2023.  So, that means that, yesterday, I finished all of that work of working on shots.

We may be going to Rich Mountain like in the fall, and I hope that by the time that happens, I will have the backlog done, or, at least, the 2023 backlog done, even though that is kind of ambitious.

Oh, I have to do something about that lens, and I guess that I am not going to that New Jersey thing.  I probably would have to pay for my own transportation.  I am slowly getting things organized, and I will do better once I build shelves in the apartment.  It’s just hard to get control of myself. 

I would love to go to Rich Mountain, love to go there.

I had a realization of something being noteworthy.  The context was that the woman who lived next door to Kneva was apparently hearing her express frustration dealing with me and said that it reminded her of her own son, who is autistic.  Something that I have never said before to anyone because I have never until now thought of it as being noteworthy was that I think that part of the problem for me then was that I found her son to be a cringey goofball.  He had this weird, cringey laugh.

Maybe I had some internalized ableism at him.  So, like, I think that that is relevant, because it’s like, okay, Jim, you’re not like that guy, but you’re still like that guy.  So, that’s relevant.  So, yeah, I was thinking about that.  I was thinking that, until my teacher burnout, my life was un an upward trajectory really from the time that I graduated from high school and that I had to be several years away from the point of my teacher burnout to be able to recognize it as a peak.

Saturday, August 31^st

I woke up at around 01:00 fearing that I would be awake for the day, and it was the weird time when it was on the borderline of whether it was too late to take melatonin.  I took one pill, and I fell back asleep.

The plants are getting a lot of water!  It’s a good time to work on pictures. 

Sunday, September 1^st

I am having trouble with the sampler essay.  I really need to get back to site maintenance for this website, even though it has become a side thing for me.

This blog website used to be the place where I tried to reach the masses, to publicize stuff.  In a weird way, it has since become the place that I go to hide stuff that I want out there but not really widely known, and there are people who read the site, but not very many.  That’s just that, and, in some ways, I like that, because I can say stuff on there that wouldn’t be safe to say if friends and family surrounding me and associates and people around here would know.

Yesterday, I worked on cell-phone shots from November, I got them done, and I transferred them to external hard drives.

I wonder if I should start my running spurts again, at least once the ground dries up. 

It’s weird that, this year, my biggest photography months have been May, June, and July without traveling outside of the South.  It’s just in Louisiana and Texas, very hot areas, in the oppressive heat, whereas I was not taking pictures here or there in February or March, didn’t even go to Lake Charles or the Acadiana Railway.  I am about overdue for a trip to both.  I need to fix that lens; damn.

It was all due to circumstances. 

Okay, I did have my Lake Charles Port Rail fix this year, but it was in June; okay, I forgot about that, because it wasn’t on a trip to Lake Charles.  It was on a trip to Houston that had us returning early enough in the morning that I could catch the train in Lake Charles.

So, I have those pictures to process.  It was hot, man.  Then, there was the CP 2816.  I got that in both directions.  The first time, I didn’t go into Texas, and, even for the second time, when I did go into Texas, the Louisiana pictures were better.  The lighting was terrible for the Texas pictures.  It was miserably hot.

Wednesday, September 4^th

I have been up since 04:00, a little bit earlier, maybe.  I got to sleep probably a little bit earlier than 21:00 last night, so, a solid seven hours of sleep.  I am losing weight still.

Really, I have been realizing that Jimbaux’s Journal has been holding me back.  So, now, I have less than a year until I can start posting “twenty years ago today” stuff for 2005.  Do I punt that for another five years?

I don’t know, because I need to get the current photo backlog done, but I am seeing how much time this is sapping from me.

We’re supposed to get a cool front here this weekend, though.

Damn, I need to do something about that lens.

I can’t really say that I walk two miles per day anymore, because I don’t, even though I did a year ago.  Maybe I’ll start doing it again once conditions improve, not just with the weather getting cooler but with not needing the morning time to work on shots and do other things.  I have so many damn shots to process.  So, that’s that.

Man, work never stops.  I realize why work stopping is a male fantasy, because so much domestic labor is handled by women.

I am kind of due for a chase of the Acadiana Railway’s Crowley Branch train, but I am just not feeling it.  It’s just not that interesting.  I want the UP Lafayette Sub local train, man.  That Crowley job would be interesting if the cars looked like they did 20-30 years ago, especially 25 years ago, when the merger had just happened and before the cars got so badly graffitied.  So, there would have been the older cars with various UP family railroad logos on them.

I don’t know, I am just not really feeling photographing trains that much.  That is remarkable.  I am just not feeling it.  So, maybe I will have time to start doing the 2005-2006 shots.  We’ll see.

Sunday, September 8^th

I cooked 15-bean soup and ate a bowl of it yesterday.  It was the last fairly big thing that I ate before I went to bed.

I was tired late yesterday, and I woke up at 04:00 and looked at a tweet from that Reaux woman from Des Allemands who lives in New York and was talking about having her nephew over and staying up until midnight with him because she is a cool auntie.  She was sharing a meme about how the thing about adulting is being excited to go to bed, and she is talking about how that last half hour until midnight was killing her.  Yeah!

Jimbaux posted on Facebook this morning “What if there were trains on the moon?”

It’s warming up a bit.  I kind of want to go to Lake Charles and shoot that train.  I will wait until the weather gets cool.  I might do a Crowley Branch run one day.

So, I imagined myself talking to PJ about those lights and him interpreting it as me as his annoying neighbor who always has a problem with sensory stuff coming from him, his property, and his family, rather than him being the one who is doing the annoying, because that is a thing that you can get away with thinking when most people don’t have these sensory sensitivities.  Like, no, I can’t exchange this meat suit for another one.  So, this is why I get weirdly happy when I learn of similar suffering from other people, because it’s a better chance to change the situation for the better if it’s not only me who is suffering.

Monday, September 9^th

I have been wondering something: could someone like me, an otherwise-able-bodied autistic person, compete in Special Olympics?  Like, I am too spastic to play basketball with non-autistic people, but what if you had an entire basketball team – or an entire basketball league – of autistic people. 

The debate about it would resemble the transgender debate, because, whoever the best player is, especially if he is more than just marginally better than the second-best player, people would start talking about how he is not really autistic.

Wednesday, September 11^th

At 05:56 CDT on this morning, I was standing on our little back-porch patio area.  Rain was falling because we are getting some of the first bands of tropical storm or Hurricane Francine.

Yesterday was just a hell of a busy exhausting day.  The day before, too, was busy.  Among the things that I did yesterday was that, for the first time ever, I set up the gasoline generator that we have.  I went through the instruction manual and did everything with the choke, I got it set up, and I got it turned on.  I experimented with it.  I got a fan plugged into it.  So, now we know that we have a gasoline generator that will work if we lose electricity for a little while, and we might lose electricity for a while.  We might lose electricity for a flicker, for a few minutes.  We might not lose electricity at all.

Yesterday morning, I was so delighted to wake up to a message from K, the first time that I hear from her in 2024.  It was so great, so lovely.

Monday, when I talked to Lauren, she suggested that I have a sleep issue that is about the quality of sleep and not the quantity of sleep that I get, and she recommended a sleep study.

It’s a little warm out here, but there is a little breeze out here that is making it tolerable.  It’s raining; so, I want to go walk, but I can’t.  I am very antsy.  I am very hungry, and I feel like I am not going to be able to do 12-hour fasting today.  It’s also that nervous energy that is causing me to maybe be a little excessive on the clothes washing.

I actually started the third load of clothes this morning before 06:00.  It’s blankets and sheets and pillow cases and bedspreads and a couple of pieces of clothes that didn’t fit into the first two washes.  The first load is colored clothes, and that is completely done, washed, dried, and folded.  In the dryer right now are towels, underwear, and T shirts.

It occurred to me over the weekend, I was thinking about alcohol consumption, spurred on by the conversation with K but also that experience that I had in December with Dustin in which I was drinking and enjoying some Guinness and tolerating it very well, and I realized that the primary reason that I don’t consume alcohol much anymore is less about dislike of it, less about inability to process it, and even less about the financial cost of it than it is that, in large part due to the harmful thing that was done to me years ago, I am pretty much never in a social situation that makes drinking alcohol seem like a good thing to do.

Thursday, September 12^th

I really feel empowered running our gasoline generator here; I feel better about it.

So, I just took a shower a little while ago and shaved, because I didn’t take one last night, because I anticipated that, even after the electricity came back on, it might go back off and that I might have to go back outside and tend to the generator.  That did not happen.

I feel like I am ready for the next storm!  Actually, one thing that I have to do for the next storm is figure out a better outlay of extension cords and splitters, because I got extension cords going right up to the refrigerator with a power strip there, when what I need to do is split them somewhere farther back so that I can have an extension cord going to other places, including the refrigerators in the garage.

Monday, September 16^th

My dietary issues now mean that it’s difficult for me to mow the grass late in the evening without having to go ride and get fast food afterward, which I guess that I could do, but it’s why I now do much of my mowing at the inopportune time in the morning, when the grass is more wet.  It’s difficult to keep my strict bedtime that way.

So, I got a piece of devastating news last night.  [This is what I covered in the “My Friend Like Died” section near the beginning of this essay.]  I was really worried, actually, until I discovered some new shocking details today. 

Tuesday, September 17^th

I learned Sunday evening about the effective end of a long and important friendship in my life.  It was pretty heartbreaking.

The friend is LCK, who was, I would say, really one of my best friends, I’d say 15 years ago, wow, even right after Katrina.  I think that we bonded after we met on a trip that I took to a place that I won’t mention in 2004.

LCK not only deleted me as a friend on Facebook, actually, he may not have deleted me at all, because he blocked my personal profile, and he also blocked the Jimbaux’s Journal Facebook fan page.  I was able to figure this out, first off, because I was using Facebook messenger to chat with someone else, and I just happened to open the message window where I had asked LCK a few weeks ago what was going on with him.  I had said that it seemed like something was wrong.  It was like around September 2, near the beginning of the month, that was around the time that I noticed that my number of friends dropped by one, and I tried to figure out who it was, and I couldn’t figure it out; so, I just didn’t worry about it.

So, I opened that window, and I realized that I couldn’t click on his profile.  It said, “You can’t communicate with this person on Messenger anymore.”  What?  Like holy crap!

Okay, did I do something wrong?  All that I had asked him was what was going on, and he could have ignored it, as he has with my other recent messages, or he could have just said “hey, things are okay, I am just kind of busy right now, loving life.”

I did the whole autistic thing of, like, okay, what did I do wrong?  Was it something that I said or did?  Apparently, in some respects, it kind of sort of was, because he didn’t block plenty of other people.  It’s weird.

So, I kept searching, and I should say this, which is that, when he talked to me recently in the last two and a half years since we resumed communication in April 2022, he talked about something happening in his life at the time, and the way that he talked about it was redflaggy. 

Last night, I learned something that made me feel less bad about the whole thing and made me feel like it really wasn’t my fault or, to the degree that it is, I really should not care that much, but I should just lament the loss of this friend, but this helped me realize that I didn’t lose him because I upset him and he blocked me.  I lost him because he basically changed.

So, I went to Google, and I did some searching.  The results were “OH MY GOD”. 

I looked at this page where he had been posting content, a page that he shared with me, and my thought was, who are you, and what did you do with LCK?  I don’t even know how to describe what I saw.

I’ll put it this way, and this is a heuristic or approach that I took with Saint Jude in the latter part of 2012 (and thereafter), which is, if I had just met this person for the first time, would I become friends with this person?

The answer here was an unequivocal “no”.

What is funny is that I talked to LCK in 2012 about that very question about Saint Jude, and he agreed.

It’s the whole “I was a nerd and now I am cool” kind of thing, like with Andrew Yang.

So, I think the real reason that he blocked me – and I realize that this is a very self-serving theory, a theory that looks the best for me, so, this may not be true and it may be motivated reasoning – is that I am a mirror to him.  My presence, my existence, my desire to have even the weakest of relationships with him now is sort of like a reminder of how what he is doing now is not who he is, because we had the kind of friendship, a cerebral-nerd-foamer kind of friendship, that I kind of know that he didn’t have with his other friends, even other foamer friends.

Our friendship basically went on hiatus in 2012-2014, because each of us had other big things happening in our lives at the time. 

He was a big part of a big part of my life. 

He is also the only friend – the only person outside of students, teachers, parents of students, and school-system officials – who has been inside of my classroom while I was teaching, and I have thought about that plenty lately with this burgeoning relationship with K, because the reason that I have sort of latched on in the last few years to my School people is that they saw a side of me that no one since then has seen, and it’s like the best thing that I have ever done.  I do not feel seen or known by the people with whom I interact today.  So, I have this strong desire to connect with people from my School experience, LCK is the only person who has no official association with the School or the school system who saw that side of me, and I remember him being impressed.

We snuck him into the back door, back when you could still do that, and he watched me teach for a period.  I remember him being really impressed by it. 

After I learned Sunday night that he blocked me, I had thought about composing a paper letter and sending it to him.  I was going to write and ask, “hey, what did I do wrong?  I am sorry if I did something wrong.  Maybe it’s nothing that I did wrong.  If it’s not, I understand. People move on.”  It was after I looked at the previously-unknown-to-me page that I was like, naahh, nope, I’m not going to write that letter.  I realized that, not only would that probably not work, because I felt like I now had a better idea of why the rift happened, but, also, I just didn’t want to do it anymore!

Again, it’s kind of like with Saint Jude: if you had just met this person today, would you become friends with him?  and the answer to that is clearly “no”.

In some ways, I am glad that he blocked me, because I had a disturbing thought last night, which was, what if he hadn’t blocked me and I had known about what he had been hiding from me, would I have still tried to hang on to friendship with him?  I don’t know, but I would have been spooked by it either way, because it gave me way more information than I had before about him.

A thing that I wanted to say is, okay, I became friends with LCK, Porkchop, and The Mid-City Marine at about the same time.  The latter two are local.  LCK wasn’t.

We had so many jokes between us, and so many turns of phrases.  I said last night and I said this morning that “I need to work on shots.”  That’s a phrasing meaning to go into a photo editing program and work on pictures that you took, but I don’t know how common of a way of describing that process is.

It’s interesting, because, and maybe I need to think about this for a while and come to a different conclusion, but my interpretation is that who Saint Jude has become is who Saint Jude always was; so, I came to accept fairly early on, back in late 2012, that my initial thinking that he was kind of a sellout is not really fair to him and not really true.  It was just that he was a young guy in an unhappy marriage in his hometown where he didn’t want to be; so, he had kind of gotten into politics and Star Wars, things in which I was interested and why my friendship was valuable to him in our hometown but less so once he got to New Orleans, whereas it is difficult for me to make that same assessment of LCK.  LCK kind of really was a nerd, and, now, his presentation is way stupider than even Saint Jude’s is.  At least with Saint Jude, there is a community, which is funny, because I kind of hate the whole group-picture, we-always-go-out-with-this-group-of-people-and-get-drunk-and-crap thing, but, in some ways, that’s actually better than the vapid, vacuous crap that LCK is doing.

I keep saying that, had he not blocked me and had I seen that previously-unknown-to-me account, I would be the one to distance myself from him and trail off.  The reason that I cannot be 100% sure of that is that he really was and, therefore, is such a big part of my life.  I have trouble accepting that he is not who he was and that he is someone with whom I should not associate.

So, he may have done me a favor by blocking me. 

LCK also knows plenty about me.  That’s part of what makes this difficult.  It’s difficult to be the age that I am and losing friends from my formative years, but the thing that I realized when I saw the previously-unknown-to-me page is that I kind of had already lost him, even if he hadn’t blocked me.

So, it’s weird, because, when I saw the previously-unknown-to-me page, I was revolted by what I saw, but it made me feel good in the sense that the rift isn’t because of something that I did or, if it is, I don’t really care, because, like, I don’t really want to be friends with this dude, and I almost feel sorry for him.

We had, in the last couple of years, talked about the idea of meeting up, but that never happened.  Now, I see why.  Also, when our friendship kind of dissolved back in 2014, that was before the Trump Era, and I kind of wanted to know what he thinks about that before I was going to trust him to share more with him.

He really was my best friend for a while.  Saint Jude and Hum J were my best local friends, and, then, The Mid-City Marine in New Orleans, but LCK understood me in ways that they didn’t, and that’s kind of what hurts and makes me think that he is a sellout.

I kind of had to become like political, and I am suspicious of people who aren’t.

It’s a sign that I have changed.  Did I change, or did I evolve?  I feel like LCK devolved, and maybe that is not fair to him, but he was a more intellectual and substantive person. 

The thought occurred to me that LCK may indeed have posted on their Facebook pages the links to their previously-unknown-to-me posts and other things suggesting that they are in a relationship and I didn’t see it because he may have used the “Friends Except” feature when posting.

One thing that lends credence to that possibility is something that I just did, which is, I went back to his previously-unknown-to-me account and went through his whole list of followers and saw some familiar names, including some people whom I know that he doesn’t respect.

The “friends except” thing is not inherently bad.  I use it, I was thinking about that conversation with a cousin-in-law when the “friends except” thing first came out and she was upset about it, and I thought to myself then “the fact that you are upset about this is exactly why this feature is needed”, because the thing that always frustrated me about Facebook from the beginning is the whole collapse about how everyone who is your “friend” is treated as the same in regards to who sees your content.  No, I might want some people to see this but not others.

So, what the “friends except” thing allows me and others to do is to more freely accept friend requests from people who aren’t that close to you.  The only problem with it is that you might say to someone, “hey, you saw what so-and-so posted on Facebook?”  and that someone else might be excluded in the “excepts” in the “Friends except”, and, now that I am possibly on the excluded end of this by someone who had been a close friend, I hate to admit this, but I sortofkindof see the cousin-in-law’s point.  However, I still think that the “friends except” thing is a good thing.

Anyway, maybe LCK knows that no one would hold him accountable, like I would.  Maybe he was offended by my suggestion that something isn’t right in his world, because he understands that something isn’t right, but he can’t acknowledge that.

So, like, am I an overly judgmental person? or am I the only one who is really a mirror to him?

So, I don’t know, and I’ll never know, probably.  Again, the only way that I can imagine us ever communicating again, especially now that I don’t want to do anything like send him a letter, in other words, the only way that I can imagine him communicating to me again is, if the thing that he is doing now fails and, as a result, he reaches out to me.

I think that the reason that he and I became friends is that we thought alike, like, oh, wow, here is somebody who thinks like I did and who also considers it a problem that we think like we do.  So, he and I gelled pretty well.  I remember so many things said in our telephone and text-message conversations so well, like almost like this cadence to them that has a purchase that stays in you, because it’s not just words; it’s a thought process that stays with you, and that’s also why it’s all the weirder and more troubling that he has become what he has become, really.  I mean, I am looking at that previously-unknown-to-me account, and I am saying, “who are you? and what did you do with LCK?”

Coincidentally, it was just a few weeks less than a decade ago we kind of stopped communicating until early 2022.

I was also thinking, too, that, if he ever approached me again, and I think that that would happen only if what he is doing now fails, I would be very circumspect about it and insist that it be only on my own terms.  I would say very little about myself and talk only about what happened between us and not yield anything until we resolve that.

I wanted to take one more foamer trip with him, out on the Golden State Route in New Mexico, maybe another one on the Sunset Route west of El Paso, but, now, I kind of don’t want to be associated with the dude.

Wednesday, September 18^th

The moon was so bright this morning.  It was a harvest moon.  I could have done like a well-lit night shot of a train or a locomotive parked, and, of course, just even when I think of that, I kind of think of LCK, because he was that big of an influence in my life.  It’s kind of like reflecting on how big of an influence Shawn Levy had on me, and LCK was part of the conversations that I had when Shawn Levy died about how big of an influence Shawn Levy had on me.

So, I dropped that lens off yesterday.  I am hoping that it is back in time for me to run to Lake Charles on the 30th and photograph the Port Rail train.  I want to do that, really do.

The reason that I want to do that is that, well, I haven’t been there in a while, but I also want to see, I want to have a blog post where I put these thoughts before the October 2014 Sampler, because it would be weird to have the October 2014 Sampler be the first place where I put thoughts about these new revelations, because it’s not a real-time, current blog post; it’s an anniversarial retrospective blog post.  So, it’s not the place to put new information.

With Shawn Levy, I could write about him as if he was actually dead, because he actually was dead.  With LCK, that’s a little tricky; he is not technically dead, even if he is in the process of becoming dead to me.

I realized even years ago that it’s to the point now that, okay, even if I start taking much fewer pictures, which I kind of am doing now, I still might not be able to process and publish all of my pictures before I die, and even LCK and I had a conversation that was proto-about this topic.

There is actually a whole lot of good stuff in my film collection that I am excited to see.  I should do it.  I really should.

Yeah, I think that that would be therapeutic, actually.  It would be therapeutic for me to go back and work on all of my film shots, and, then, thinking long term, once I have all of that done, I can start working on all of my 2005-and-beyond digital pictures, and, then, it would be more contextualized, because it’s like the film shots are so far out of my consciousness that it does seem as though my photography and foaminess started later than it did, started in 2005 when LCK was, no pun intended, in the picture.

All photographers are writers, but not all writers are photographers. That’s probably not true, and I don’t think that even makes sense, but it’s a thought that I just had based on looking at these pictures that I took at 5th Avenue in Lake Charles and thinking about my old film and my black and white film and remembering how, when my time at the newspaper was finishing, after being such a good staff writer, interviewer, and managing editor, that I was trying to get into photography (and held a position as a photographer on staff at the newspaper), but another thing that I was thinking about, too, and this is like a weird revelation that I just had, is that, in the last several years, learning that I am autistic and coming to know my fawning response and how I have a habit of trying to ingratiate myself to people who won’t necessarily reciprocate and trying to be cool and whatever, I think that another way of looking at those presentations that LCK makes of himself now is that, not only is he not the kind of person to whom I would try to ingratiate myself now, but, even a long time ago when I was more insecure and less self aware, I wouldn’t even really like try to be cool with him.  You know, there is this constant question in my head now of, does my being put off at his presentation now reflect something bad about him? or does it reflect something bad about me?

Am I too uptight or? … ha!!!  That reminds me of that time that he called me on the telephone to ask me if I thought that he was too uptight, because two of his friends said that he was too uptight, and it bothered him.

Did he change, or is he becoming who he truly is?  He just was not this way, and it’s very difficult for me to imagine how in the world somebody who was who he was has become who he has become, but he has, whereas it’s easy for me to see Saint Jude’s transition, and it was easy for me to see it years ago, while it’s still difficult for me to see LCK’s transition; so, oh well.

I was aware from the time that I was a kid, reading books and magazines from a long time ago, from my earliest life, that there was this world of people who knew about trains, and, of course, when you are a kid, pretty much all of them know more about trains than you do.

So, it’s kind of like, when I first encountered him, he sort of struck me as this person who already was in this world about which I was still learning.  It’s hard to explain what I mean by that.  Okay, yes, my obsession with trains and my taking pictures of them preceded my knowing of him, but, at the same time, he was more a part of the railroading thing about which I was trying to learn, and even before I even met him, when I was on the Yahoo! Groups, he already was someone whom I considered to be super knowledgeable.

Wednesday, September 19^th

I got the first coat of regular paint on those cabinet doors, except for one side of the doors, because I need to turn them over, and I was going to do that yesterday afternoon, but it was too late, and I was too tired.

It occurred to me this afternoon that this LCK thing sort of reminds me of when Shawn Levy died, and I feel like I need to go back and reread my essay about that, because, when Shawn Levy died, I hadn’t really thought about him in a while, because we had had a falling out years before, but, when he died, it made me think so, so many things, and it made me think of his influence on my life.

So, I am just realizing as I am recording this that I need to go back and reread that essay about his life and death, and the thing about LCK is that I am thinking about him now as if he died, but, in some ways, worse.

Legally and biologically, he has not died, but, in every other way, he has died for me, and, it’s kind of worse.  He didn’t die as the LCK whom I knew, and, now, when he legally and biologically dies, he won’t die as the LCK whom I knew, and, so, it’s as if he did something worse than dying.  I didn’t lose LCK to death; I lost him to something that is, at least for me, somewhat worse, but I don’t know how to describe it, and what’s funny is that I remember him writing to me when Shawn Levy died, saying that he knew that Shawn had a big influence on me.

So, yeah, I am talking about LCK as though he were dead.  It’s crazy, and it reminds of what Blacker said about how I talked about Kelly Mac.

Friday, September 20^th

I finally looked up the “essentially” email message from LCK in 2005, and Hurricane Katrina now is a generation away.  It’s very relevant but, also, ancient history.

He said that he had looked up Harvey on MapQuest, ha!  Remember MapQuest? and he said that it is “essentially in New Orleans.”  That was a very interesting exchange of email messages.  One thing that I discovered that I had forgotten, and, when I say “forgotten”, it’s because I don’t remember ever thinking this, but it’s something that I wrote, that I had thought about asking him if I could escape to his place for Katrina, and, he had thought, even before I had [not] asked, about offering it to me. 

Katrina was such a formative, traumatizing event, and he was, in a small way, a part of that experience.  In that message, I mentioned how I could not leave family to evacuate.  It’s weird how Gustav was only three years later, and I don’t consider it to be ancient history as I do Katrina.  Gustav is now 16 years ago. Katrina is now 19 years ago.

If you were born or even conceived right after Hurricane Katrina, you’re old enough to vote now, but, if you were born or conceived right at around the time of Gustav, you’re not, but you almost are.

I just kind of feel betrayed even though it doesn’t mean that he betrayed me, and, so, he didn’t necessarily do anything wrong, or, if he did do something wrong, he didn’t necessarily do it to me, at least not any more than he did to all of humanity, but, definitely, this is a stark, stark, stark contrast to what I knew of him both privately and in his public presentation.

Today, I ate food and then sat for a while in the Subway restaurant right across East Saint Mary Blvd from University of Louisiana Lafayette, and I was feeling really old.  Before that, I went to Target.  I forgot to get a clothes basket.  That’s okay.  There were no good cargo shorts there; I will keep looking.  I might go to Kohl’s on some other day.

At Target, I got one shirt and something that I never have bought before, which is a full pants but made out of the same material that makes cargo shorts, almost like a land-surveyor’s pants.  I don’t know what to call it.  I should look at the receipt.

There was something else that I wanted to mention about the LCK thing, which is that there always was, maybe not always, but from a certain time in the friendship, especially before its trailing off in 2012-2014, there always was this element of secrecy, and the general reason for it is his profession combined with the fact that I am an internet bomb thrower, and, even though he never said this, I just kind of know that it was dangerous for him to be associated with me, with no such corresponding danger on my side of the relationship.

One of his coworkers knew my family, and I never let this person know that I was friends with him.  That was for LCK’s own protection, but this person eventually kind of figured it out anyway.

I am thinking about a time in 2009 when I stayed with him, the time that we went foaming with one of his friends, the one time that I met him.  The three of us were in his truck, and I said something, I might have made a complaint about something, and I think that the friend said to LCK, I think the word was “cranky”, and LCK responded “yep”, and I interpreted that to mean that he must have warned the friend ahead of time that I am how I am, and, now that I am thinking about that, it could be a sensory regulation thing with autism in which other people don’t know how irritated with heat and sound you get; so, they don’t know to be accommodating, and I don’t know how to handle my emotions. 

This is where we once again say, what if everyone in society was like you?  Everyone would know to be deferential in a way to not inflame that.

If I would meet up with LCK now, as we discussed that we would, one thing that I would have shared with him if I felt comfortable with him is about the autism revelations, about how this is why I get hot, this is why I get sensitive to sound, this is why I burned out of teaching and haven’t been able to accomplish much since then, and not so much apologize for things, because, on the one hand, I am not sure that all of those things were things that I did wrong, but I also wasn’t fair to myself.

Saturday, September 21^st

The current LCK murdered the LCK whom I knew.  I had thought that before earlier this week.  A little while ago, I was thinking that that was like Darth Vader killing Anakin Skywalker, even though Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker, and then it dawned on me that, whoah, I actually saw that movie, one of the prequels, in the theater with LCK, and, for some reason, it feels like I saw Episode I with him, but that can’t be right, because Episode I came out in 1999.  I have to look this up.

LCK didn’t really understand the movie, and I remember the whole connection between Dubya and Episode III with Saint Jude saying that he was glad that he didn’t read that article about George Lucas saying that the original thing was a commentary on Richard Nixon before he first saw the movie.

LCK is like that good kid Anakin Skywalker who became Darth Vader.  There is no way that that is not going to find itself into my writing!

Pub was great last night; I purchased alcohol for the first time in 2024.  I bought a couple of bottles of Guinness, $5 each; that’s kind of pricey, but whatever.  It’s the first time that I purchase alcohol since I met with Dustin on December 20, oh, weird, nine months to the day later.

I don’t think that I have even drank alcohol, let alone purchased it, since then.  If I would have, it would have been given to me by someone in the family.  Maybe Bill gave me alcohol when I went to his house in February.

Last night, I went back to the beginning of our text-message conversation in April 2022, and there was something about it that struck me, something that I had forgotten, and that may be relevant to figuring out exactly why he blocked me, which is that he said in early 2022 that, for the past year or so, he had actually considered reaching out to me.  So, to me, that lends credence to my most-self-serving hypothesis about why he blocked me, which, I don’t think that I have mentioned this on a recording before, also looks best for him, which is that I am a mirror to how bad he actually looks.  Like, he is doing this because maybe he is deeply insecure, and I am the one person who will see it for what it is, and maybe there are others who have been blocked.  I don’t know.

But I am the one person who sees it for what it is, and he doesn’t like that, and that’s actually a LCK-serving hypothesis, too, because it suggests that he still has a soul, that this isn’t really who he is, that he is redeemable.

In other news, I was just thinking, talking to Porkchop on the text messaging, trying to find information ‘bout his new scanner, because I am thinking about getting one soon, especially if we are going to go to Rich Mountain.  So, I am trying to find out about this scanner

Sunday, September 22^nd

Today is the first day of autumn.  The autumnal equinox happens I think this morning.  It’s still going to be hot for another week.

I plan on going to Lake Charles on the 30th.  That’s a Monday.  I am hoping to have my big lens back by then.  That’ll be the “My Friend Died” blog post.

I don’t know, it’s way too premature to say this, but I feel like I am coming to accept the LCK thing,

For some reason, I already forgot why, but I was thinking about Sarah Palin and then LCK.  I thought about Palin first, because I was thinking about, I was thinking in relation to Tim Walz and reactionaries digging up stuff on him, about how Republicans were complaining in 2008 that reporters were flying to Alaska to search for information on Palin, as if that is an illogical or inappropriate thing to do when someone is a candidate for Vice President, especially when the person is such an unknown.

Then, it made me realize that I probably heard that over the radio, because I was at LCK’s apartment when the Republican convention happened that year, because I remember George W Bush saying that he wasn’t going to go to the convention, so that he could focus on Hurricane Gustav, apparently stung from the criticism of his actions of Hurricane Katrina.

Like I said, really, there were no signs.  By contrast, with Saint Jude, I guess that there were signs about who he became that I didn’t like; with Hum J, almost the same thing, because Trumpism opened my eyes to things (that were there before, meaning that stuff in the past now makes sense in ways that they didn’t before Trumpism), and, of course, I liked LCK for a lot longer than I liked Hum J or Saint Jude.  [Did I?]

Monday, September 23^rd

This morning, one of my crazy neighbors who insists upon backing out of her own driveway in the darkness every morning nearly ran me over.  I had to jump out of the way.  I was yelling at her, “ARE YOU GOING TO STOP???  ARE YOU GOING TO STOP???  YOU ALMOST RAN ME OVER AGAIN!!!”

I texted her: “You just now almost ran me over.  I had to jump into the grass to avoid being hit by you.  Why don’t you have the decency to watch where you are going?”

That’s the third time that she has almost run me over.  She doesn’t look where she is going, and she insists upon backing out of her driveway every morning.

There are no kids or no pets there.  She could easily back into her parking space without risking hitting anyone.

I then talked to her friend, another neighbor, who said, “She’s been doing this for a thousand years.”

Yeah, that’s the problem.

The friend also said that this neighbor drives “like a bat out of hell.”  She does.  She is a reckless driver.  She shouldn’t be driving.

I got a reply to my initial text message that she almost hit me.  She said “Oh my god, I didn’t see you,” to which I replied “Yeah, because you weren’t looking.”  She didn’t reply to that.  Then, later on, I wrote that there is also the matter that you insist upon backing out of your driveway in the darkness, rather than going forward about it.  She didn’t respond to that either.

Tuesday, September 24^th

The conversations about the neighbor nearly running me over got me to thinking about something.  Am I a “global” thinker?   I need to look up that conversation with Momma Sue about this, about Sarah, about making everything a “global issue”, whereas I became that myself, but, in some ways, I already was that.

I was just thinking about how, what if I start wearing a reflective vest?  That probably would help me, but that probably would also help to foster an expectation that it’s the responsibility of the person walking in the dark to make himself seen to motorists, which could endanger anyone not wearing a reflective vest, because it could condition motorists to look only for people wearing reflective vests.

The weather is supposed to cool off in a couple of days, get down into the mid or lower 60s.  I am looking forward to that.  It’s now looking like it will be warming up by Monday, which is my planned day to go to Lake Charles, which makes me wonder if I should change it to Friday, but what if the lens comes in?  but what if it doesn’t?

If I don’t hear by tomorrow that the repaired lens is shipped from the Canon center, then that means that it will not be here by Saturday, I guess not on Sunday; so, I would not have it on Monday. 

So, that means that I could just as well go to Lake Charles on Friday.  The only problem with that idea is that there is no westbound Sunset Limited there then, but there might be an eastbound Sunset Limited to photograph; I have never photographed the #2 around there, and that would be tough, since it is the Autumnal Equinox.  I wouldn’t know where to photograph it, and that’s not really that important, unless the Port Rail train does not run.  Actually, shooting the #2 would mean that I’d have to stay in Lake Charles maybe longer than I would want.  So, maybe that is not a good idea.  That doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t go on Friday, but it does mean that the backup plan is not there.

So, if I went on Friday, I would, after ending with Port Rail, go check out the rice mill and the whole Lake Arthur spur thing and check out the UP yard, just as I would anyway, but, then, after that, maybe go to Kinder.  Of course, that will make me think of LCK, but, whatever.

Wednesday, September 25^th

I have been thinking again about the NOGC.  It would be nice if there was a, you know, some centerbeam cars and a few boxcars on that line.  Yeah.  It would be nice if Zatarain’s was a customer.  It would be nice if there was a passenger train out of Algiers Point.  That would be nice.

A rather happy thought occurred to me earlier today, while I was looking at my pictures folders on the big computer, and that is that, you know, if, and, apparently, since I will not be doing the full-day blogging of 2005 pictures, then, especially if I am doing scanned film, I could do monthly sampler essays from my 2005-onward digital pictures.  That would be great! 

So, if I am not doing the each-date posting of all of the presentable pictures from the whole year, then I could at least do samplers; that would be good, and, also, that would mean that I would return to having something for each month, a blog article for each month, and I am just now thinking that this is like a new reason to keep this website, because I have been thinking lately about how it is increasingly more difficult to justify.  It’s just something that is there.  For the first six or seven months of 2025, I would have to make, you know, real-time posts, but, hey, I could do that.  I could go foaming once per month starting in January and lasting at least until June.

Anyway, a thought unrelated to this that I just had is that I wish that I had tried to get some other friends to come into my classroom to see me teach at the height of my teaching career.  LCK has the distinction of being the only person to have no official association with the school, no official reason to be on the school premises, let alone be in my classroom when school was happening, who has been in my classroom and seen me teach when I was in the prime of my teaching career.  I guess that we should include parents and guardians of students as people with official reasons to be there.

Then again, having said that, I don’t know who else could have done that.  Hum J always was a teacher; so, it would have been tough to get him there when I was teaching.  Saint Jude and people associated with him are about the only people at that time with whom I was friends would have been able to do that.

Basically, of everybody else who is important in my life now, Porkchop is the only one who could have come, because our friendship was active during that time.  Maybe Bob E or The Mid-City Marine could have come.  Everyone else who is important to me in my life now is someone whom I got to know after that time.  I guess that some relatives could have come and seen it, but about the only friend from home with whom I was friends at the time was J Mac, and, now, I don’t care.  We’re not friends anymore. 

Anyway, that’s a distinction that LCK has.  He is the only person outside of that official context who has seen me teach in my prime, and I recall him being quite impressed by it.

Thursday, September 26^th

I think that because I have been looking at NOGC pictures lately, I have been fantasizing about trains again, fantasies that I cannot make reality, due to this overpowering world.

Saturday, September 28^th

This morning, I was thinking about how LCK influenced my musical choices.  At least one time when we were visiting each other, I think when he was visiting me, because this was before I had laptop computers, I took his book of compact discs, his book of CDs, I almost have to say what a compact disc is now.  This is also making me feel old, because this is not how people listen to music anymore.  I took a bunch of CDs and ripped plenty of them.  I used to listen to plenty of Hoobastank, one particular album, I think that it’s Every Man For Himself, I ripped that from LCK.  Newfound Glory, ripped that from LCK.  The Three Days Grace CD that came out in 2008, I think that I bought that myself, and it seems that there is some other Three Days Grace album that I ripped from LCK.

I think that I also ripped a Linkin’ Park CD, maybe Meteora, from LCK, even though Shawn Levy got me into that album, but it’s because of LCK that I have the files.

Ashville, North Carolina, looks awful.  It’s so terrible, what those people are experiencing.  It’s very bad.

Sunday, September 29^th

I met with The Mole Cousin today, to talk to him about The Troubles, the situation.  I will discuss more about that conversation tomorrow when I am on my trip, after it has marinated in my head for a while.

I think that a connection with all of these issues and the issues with LCK is of the shame of what happened.  I think that I may have told this to The Mole Cousin last time, that, when that bomb was dropped on me in Thanksgiving Weekend of 2012, for a very long time, I didn’t tell anyone, I didn’t talk to anyone about it.  I didn’t talk to myself about it.  I didn’t acknowledge it.

It’s a very raw issue.

It’s sort of like The Mole Cousin saying what he said to me somewhat helped me realize that I had sort of internalized plenty of this as guilt, that I am a bad person or, at the very least, that I deserve this.  So, in a sense, The Mole Cousin emboldened me. 

Today – September 30^th

Finally!  We are on today’s content!

With no time for a morning walk today, I left the house at 05:43 bound for Lake Charles. 

So, yesterday afternoon, I met for a long time at Taco Bell with The Mole Cousin, and where do I start with that conversation?  I guess the most meaningful part of it is, okay, like what to do going forward, and he kind of agreed with my whole plan, talk to KSJ first, and he does agree that I was wronged and that they owe me for what they did to me.  This should never have happened. 

I am driving to Lake Charles with no telephoto lens.  I am upset about that.  That’s going to limit my shot possibilities, but, then again, I don’t want to try to make a huge number of pictures today.  Today’s goal isn’t making a huge amount of pictures.  It’s more about addressing this cabin fever that I have and also ringing in foam season but also as a way of processing this LCK revelation, on top of The Troubles. 

This is much earlier than I normally leave to go to Lake Charles, about 45 minutes earlier.  For one thing, I didn’t have anything to do.  I could have and should have swept the bathroom floor, yes, but another thing is that I wanted to try to get some crack of dawn shots, which I thought would be difficult to do with a lack of a telephoto lens, because most of the relevant railroad lines run east-west.  So, may plan was to go and camp out at the frontage road crossing of the Lake Charles Subdivision just south of where I-10 crosses it just north of the end of the Subdivision, where it joins the Lafayette Subdivision.

I may soon be going to Morgan City to work, and I want to have the scanner before I do that.  That’s where my favorite train is. 

If you are autistic, you do see life as always trying to get permission from other people, and, really, that’s what everyone is doing, but most people don’t see it, apparently.  We are not subsistence farmers producing all that we consume.  This is why I hate some of the socialistic anti-UBI rhetoric.  It’s sortofkindof correct that UBI can’t work, at least not nearly as well as many of its proponents say, and that’s kind of the conundrum.

Like I told The Mole Cousin, I wasn’t like this back when this area was a place where I visited a few times per year, two-to-four times per year.

I hate lying.

I really hate lying.

I took a shower this morning, because I took one yesterday morning after doing some walking and painting, because I hadn’t taken one the night before.  I would imagine that, as early as tonight, I will be resuming the night shower practice.

I am hearing the French speakers on KRVS this morning.

Dawn Detour

I took a long detour to Lake Arthur.

Look, it’s an interesting drive.

I did take a poop in the bathroom, and there was soap in the bathroom.  That soap machine may not have been there the first time that I came here; so, I am glad that there is a soap machine in there.

Then, I went walk out on the pier and took some pictures of the sunrise.

These pictures also show a guy walking around at the end of an adjacent pier, pacing back and forth.

Apparently, he was contemplating life.

That’s what I was doing.

Really, that’s what I always am doing, but real life often distracts – and, then, provides material for more contemplation.

At 06:45, and I left the downtown area of Lake Arthur, thinking that it would be nice if there still were trains here and that it would be nice if most of these people weren’t Trumpers.

I wonder if there are people here who would vote for Harris-Walz; I wonder if they would be scared to put out Harris-Walz signs.

So, I think that I mentioned this before, but the thing with LCK is that, unlike other fallings out or whatever, looking back, I don’t see any signs of it like I do for other fallings out, other than – and this should be an anti-sign – that he is a nerd; therefore, he is like, this kind of outcome is possible, I guess because there was no opportunity for him to act like this before.  Like, nothing that he said that I can think of are things that I haven’t heard from guys who don’t turn out to do this.

A Fortuitous Find At Iowa Due To A Fortuitous Mistake At Lacassine

I crossed the Lafayette Sub track on Highway 101 in Lacassine at I guess around 07:10ish; I looked to the west and saw a headlight, and I was thinking, okay, it must be something on the Lafayette Sub but it could be a while before it got to that crossing because it might have to switch Lacassine Yard.

I was coming north on Highway 101.  My intention was to take the service road north of I-10 westbound to get to the crossing of that road of the Lake Charles Subdivision, I guess because I didn’t realize that taking the South Frontage Road was an option.

I ended up accidentally getting on I-10 West, like, dammit.  Well, this ended up being a very fortuitous mistake, because I would not have gotten this shot had I taken the service road. The service road is blocked due to the construction that is happening on or around the I-10 bridge.  I ended up getting off of I-10 at Highway 165, found the crossing of the South Frontage Road, poked around and realized that the shot that I had in mind was pretty bad. 

So, as I was leaving, I was about to leave and go into Lake Charles, to give up and do something else, I realized, oh, there is a train right there!  It was creeping along, coming north through the junction!  I could see it just south of the Louisiana Highway 3258 crossing, the South Frontage Road.

Oh, cool, this is great!  There is a clearing open on the western side of the track, and the sun wasn’t really up to make it backlit.  This Union Pacific Railroad train briefly stopped.

So, that was perfectly timed, because, if this train came through just a little bit later, it would be much worse lit. 

The way that it was lit made it at least salvageable. 

After this train passed, I realized that it was probably the train that I just saw from the Highway 101 crossing in Lacassine.

So, it’s very good that I did not try to do anything with that at Lacassine, because, it probably was this train, but, even if it hadn’t been, it probably would have stopped in Lacassine for a time.

This isn’t a bad shot!

The train had stopped, and I am not sure why, but I think that it had something to do with the bridge construction on I-10.

Here is a nice, clean bulkhead flatcar owned by the UP itself and loaded with plate steel.

I like that.

There is a block of empty centerbeam flatcars here.

I wonder if this is a setout for Kinder. 

Somewhere in this train, I did get a CNIS 412059 reporting mark and number off of a car, and it might be in this block of centerbeam cars, though, if it is, then that’s probably not a Kinder setout.

Here is a gondola car and two coil cars: MKT 97008, UP 212150, and UP 212316.

There were more coil cars farther back in the train.  There were some new coil cars, which look funky.  I don’t like them.  Also, they are graffitied.

There was a little block of intermodal after car 128.

I am such a foamer, and, of course I am thinking about LCK, since he knows this area.

I counted 149 cars, at this crossing at mile 679.49, there are a bunch of people at the crossing probably wondering what I am doing, and that’s a good question.

That’s it for this train and for this location.  The time was 07:41.  So, that was good.

There are two bananas in my truck.  How did that happen?

The day is off to a good start!  This right here is the first time that I photograph a northbound freight train on the Lake Charles Subdivision.  Notice that I said “freight train”, because I did photograph Big Boy UP 4014 northbound here.

This would be a good place to return to photograph any UP train that I might see.  I sure wish that I had a scanner.  So, yeah, this is good, as David Clímaco would say.  “This is good.”

I want my own life; man, I miss my life.

Anyway, that ended up being very fortuitous, and that is something different; that is probably going to be the most unique shot that I get today.  So, that was good.

Getting To The Port

Yeah, I had a little time to kill.  I thought about going walk around by the port, but that would not work well, because the shot that I need to do today, since I don’t have a telephoto lens, is that wide-angle shot from the Sallier Building and then, from there, try to boogie to Lake Street.  It’s going to be tough, and then what?  I don’t know.

But, really, I was thinking that, okay, if I can get those three shots plus what I just did, and since it might be too high-sunny to photograph Amtrak, I might leave early and return to the house.  I have stuff to do, like sweep the bathroom floor, like respond to people on Facebook, like working on shelves.  Actually, that is what I should be doing.  Work on the shelves, Jim.

I need to talk to KSJ.  I need to talk to KSJ.  I need to talk to KSJ.  I need to talk to KSJ, now, now, now, now, now, now.

I had thought about going for a walk downtown, but it now seemed to be too late for that.  Shortly after 08:00, I had to stop and get coffee at the Exxon place on the corner of Highway 14 and Broad Street.

There were plenty of cars in Harbor Yard, but it was very backlit, difficult to see.

Oh, is this Golden Hooks, Seafood Chicken, where the Burger King was?  So, there is no more Burger King there.  Okay, fine.  I might treat myself to Taco Bell breakfast if the train finishes its work soon enough.

The Port Of Lake Charles

I arrived at the Port Of Lake Charles at 08:26.  GMTX 2607 was parked without anyone on board fairly close to the entrance to the port, and GMTX 2134 was working some cars. 

The new track is not open.  It looked like I am not going to be able to do that Lake Street shot because there are some men and equipment blocking it doing what appears to be preparation for a temporary road crossing right there, if I understand what they are doing correctly, and there are other workers near this end of the route.  So, there is work going on, but it’s still not complete.  The train would still be taking the old route out of here. 

At 08:41, I photographed the Port Rail job coming out of the port but then backing down that wye track, as I suspected.

So, anyway, there is a construction project happening just south of this building, and it’s making me feel sad, very sad, because I should be there doing stuff, I should be talking to these amigos, managing cosas, but I am not.

I am also checking out the shot off of the northern end of the building and noticing that, as I suspected, this new extension is going to improve the . . .

No, it’s not going to improve the view, because there are power lines that are going to jack the whole thing, actually. 

I will have to come here again pretty soon, as soon as my telephoto lens returns, to get some shots on the old line.

Actually, this is going to improve the shot of the train coming out of the port, because it has to dogleg coming out of the port before the power lines start.  Yeah, this shot by the elevator shaft will be good.

For now, I am getting shots of both tracks.  It would be nice if they kept both tracks.  I always presumed that they would remove the existing track.  Maybe one could be like a double-track mainline for a brief bit!

I was thinking before that, okay, this is the first time that I really go foaming like this – I need to not use that word “foaming” anymore – this is the first time that I go train hunting like this where I am thinking as I am out hunting that I need to like get enough shots to make a montage, because it’s only recently, not including my Morgan City stuff over the summer…  I don’t know, when did I start doing montages for the current backlog?  no later than March 31, but probably some time before that, too, but I have been out train hunting since then, especially in Morgan City, and I don’t recall thinking that I need to get enough good pictures to make a four-picture montage, but I did think of it today, and this is the first time that I go out train-hunting since July 10, and I wasn’t thinking about montages at the time, because I guess that it wasn’t like this.

Here comes the train. 

Yeah, it looks like it didn’t pick up anything when it shoved back around the port.

Maybe that was a communication error.

It has those five cars, four hopper cars and an eight-axle flatcar, I think KRL 70016. 

The time here is about 08:55 CDT.

Barbe-Lake

I got on top of the truck at my little shot by Barbe Street. 

I realized that my shadow was where the bulldozer was, and that was bad.  There was no time to reposition myself, and there was nothing else that I could do.  So, I just altered the composition to not include the bulldozer.  The workers there were looking at me all funny, looking at this dude hopping on top of his truck. 

They might have thought that I was some sort of supervisor or inspector or something like that, and they all kind of had a laugh about it. 

I guess that this is okay.

So, here are those workers and the train.

Okay, this is getting tedious already.

They got right back to work as soon as the train passed on what looks like a temporary crossing.

Ernest Street

Here is the train at Ernest Street.

Yes, that is very different than the telephoto shot that I usually get here.

There was a big “Trump” sign here, which is horrible.

Ryan Street

Then, I got the train at Ryan Street.

This is different than the telephoto shots that I usually get here!

I missed the green light because I shot the train here.

These pictures are not going to be great shots, because they are wide-angle shots, but, then, again, I shoot these same shots all the time with the same locomotives and with the telephoto lens.  So, this is some variety. 

I am thinking about that empty flat car at the end of the train.  Grumpy doesn’t like an empty flat car at the front of the train.  I am just the opposite.  I don’t like an empty flat car at the end of the train, because it makes it look like the train ended before the flat car.  It’s really hard to see the flat car.  The flatcar at the beginning of the train allows you to easily see the end of the first car.

The coffee was good.  I like it, and it costed $2.30.  So, that was pretty good, not bad, not good, but not bad, a 20oz cup of hot coffee.  I never really have bought hot coffee in a convenience store like that, except maybe that time that I met with Dewyane Derail Casteel, speaking of which, I need to do that blog article.

Fifth Avenue

I am at Fifth Avenue.  That “neutral ground” term is used way out here.  

I pulled up here and realized that there was a shady, tree-shrouded area between the house and the track and that I had a little bit of time to take a leak there.  I was wearing my black athletic shoes and low-cut socks.  I might have hit some poison ivy or poison oak in there.  Dogs started barking there.  They stopped fairly quickly, but it was like, “oh, shut up,” and it reminded me of those dogs on Saint Mary Street.

The train came.

I back off as the train gets closer, something that is not much of an option when I am using the telephoto lens.

That’s quite different than my usual view here!

So, anyway, what I was thinking when I left Fifth Avenue where and when those dogs were barking is, okay, tell me you’re neurotypical without telling me you’re neurotypical, because it’s like, okay, you are a jerk, and that is the thing that healing has done for me in the last few years, because it’s like self-hatred for how I feel about barking dogs has gone in away in lieu of thinking that people who have those loud dogs are just jerks; what whoever the owner of those dogs is doing to me is not something that I would ever do to people, and, yes, that is a thing that you are doing to me.  You are choosing to have a dog that irritates people.

That’s why I don’t feel bad about trying to hurt these dogs, even though I know what might happen to me if I did that, which is why I don’t do it.

So, that’s what I was thinking as I was setting up for that shot over there; tell me that you’re neurotypical without telling me that you’re neurotypical. 

Harbor Yard

I arrived at the yard at 09:23 CDT. 

I know that I did mention that, now, when I am out train hunting, I am thinking in terms of getting enough shots for the montage, but, now, I am thinking that the montage has to be good and balanced, and my problem with the one good shot of the westbound train of today – this Port Rail train when it returns to the port – being jacked is that it means that the montage could be imbalanced.  If all of the pictures that I got of this train are of it going east, and if all of them are from the southern side of the track, then they all are of the same orientation with the locomotives on the right side of the wedge with the vanishing point to the left.  So, like, all of the pictures except for the one of the UP train at dawn would be like that.

So, that Barbe Street shot is like the one place where I could kind of get a decent shot of the westbound train, but, now, it’s jacked because of all of that equipment there, and I was thinking, too, that I could leave here early and go and do that shot that I did last August of the #1 in Rayne, now that it is five or six weeks later.

The light won’t be good, because it will still be high sun, but it will be better than it was for the shot from last August.  It will be a little bit lower, not by much, but still noticeably better, and I was also just thinking, too, that that is a good solution for the problem of the montage being unbalanced.  So, I might do that.  I might poke around here for a little while after this train, maybe go to Taco Bell, maybe poke around by the mainline by the UP yard, go at least take a peek up the Lake Charles Sub, see what’s out there.  I tell you what; if I was out here in the late afternoon, that shot where I was this morning would be good.

I didn’t want to stay out here late.  So, I was thinking of blowing off the #1 at least in Lake Charles and was also trying to think if there is a decent place to shoot it other than Rayne. 

Then, I could get back to Lafayette early enough to do something, stop at Target and get myself a clothes basket, maybe?  I am kind of sweaty.  So, I don’t want to go to Kohl’s, not today.

This has been a pretty productive morning so far, especially since the once mistake that I made turned out to be fortuitous.  The mistake that I made made one of the best shots of today possible, because it’s a shot that I have never done with any lens.  In a sense, all of the shots that I have taken today except for the balcony shot are new shots in the sense that I have done them only with the telephoto lens before, whereas, so, I have shot at those locations before today, but not with this lens.  There is a qualitative difference, and, I guess you could say, a quantitative difference, in those shots, even if it’s a broader view of the same scene but with the optical axis maybe be in a different place.

It took a while for the train to leave Harbor Yard to return to the port, and I think that it’s because there was some Maintenance-Of-Way work happening.

I soon learned that the GMTX 2134 was returning the port light power.  So, that’s it.  There is no train.  I could return to the port, because they might do some switching that is worth checking out. 

So, what to do now?  Taco Bell stops serving breakfast at 11:00, and the time right now is 09:50.  If I am going to get back to the house this early, I might as well just fast, actually.  I brought a book to read, but it’s too hot for that.  So, yeah, I think that I should just forego fast food today, especially since I had so much of it yesterday.  I have food.  I have two bananas, an apple, two Power Crunch bars, two Keto fat cups, and blueberries.  So, at some point, I will eat that, probably soon, actually, because I have been awake for more than six hours now.  Fortunately, I am not that hungry.

All right, Jim, what are you going to do here?  Make a decision.  Yeah, so, perhaps rationalizing by thinking that I wanted to check out the cars at the port, I chased this thing westward; doing so caused me to witness what could have been a grade-crossing collision.

I Witnessed A Near Miss At Lake Street

A tractor-trailer truck going to the port turning left from the northbound lane on Lake Street onto West Sallier Street westbound, like going to the port, the same place that the train was going, just went ahead of the train, the locomotive, and the locomotive had to slow down to avoid a collision.

It may have been a grade crossing collision had it not been light power.   

I ran to get another shot, a shot that showed both the locomotive and the offending truck in the same image, and, in my running, I dropped my audio recorder that I use to make notes for these essays onto Lake Street, which caused a little bit of damage to the battery case.  That’s not good.

Here is the image of both the locomotive and the truck that nearly collided with it going to the port.

The engineer nodded his head side-to-side afterward, and, after that, he saw me, and I pointed to that truck, and then he nodded his head up and down, like he knew what I was talking about.

So, he knows that I was there and witnessed this.

One Last Perusal Of The Port

At the port, I didn’t see any lumber or anything that is stacked and packaged that looks like lumber anywhere. 

Bad Relations

At 10:34, I left J’s office after a brief visit there.  I really do not like what I was told there, but it kind of gave me a new insight into what I must discuss with KSJ.

Tanks, Walmart, And Rice

I stopped and took pictures of tank cars on the branch on the side of Highway 397.

Then, I came around north on Gerstner and realized that I would be passing by Walmart and that it was a good idea to get gasoline here and now.

So, I did that and then realized that I had to use the toilet and, then, I saw the Taco Bell right there, and I am like, okay, I used to have qualms about going into a place like that to use the bathroom without buying anything, and, now, I am like “no”. 

So, I went in and then I remembered that you have to get a key from management to use the bathroom; okay, I am not doing that if I am not buying anything.

So, I went into Walmart right there.  There are two toilets in there, one wheelchair accessible and one not.  The non-wheelchair accessible one had urine on the seat.  So, I went into the wheelchair-accessible one. 

So, I had this thought that peeing on the seat even of the non-accessible toilets is ableist, because it encourages people who don’t otherwise need the wheelchair-accessible bathroom to use the wheelchair-accessible bathroom, therefore denying the wheelchair-bound person a toilet if one happens to walk in while it’s being used by a person who is using it only because of pee on the seat of the other ones. 

So, I thought of that.

I realized that, since I am inside of Walmart, I might as well get anything not needing refrigeration that I need, and I didn’t have grocery bags with me.  So, I went by hand and put a bunch of Roma tomatoes in my hand, because I am almost out of them at the house.  I bought them on the self-checkout, put them in a bag, used a credit card to buy something that cost less than $2, and then got out. 

As I was leaving, there was this White dude with a bunch of packs of potting soil or something, and he got asked by the worker at the exit to show his receipt, and because this is an older guy with heavy stuff, I asked him if he needed help with that.  He said “nah”.  Then, he kind of joked about my one bag, asking if I needed help, and I said that I may be eating that stuff.

Then, he started going on about wondering why that guy checked him and not me.  I told him that it’s because his items are not bagged.  He said that they were bagged in the packaging.  Yeah, I know, but the times that I have been checked like that have been when I don’t have items in the bag. 

He was like, “oh, okay,” and he called the worker an “a**hole” and said “welcome to America”, and I think that I know what that means, what kind of person he is, and I said, look, it’s okay, dude, there nothing wrong with this.

At about 11:28, I was back at the rice mill, and I got this picture.

Damn, I hate graffiti.

Snacking At The Depot

I saw a “This vehicle stops at all railroad crossings” sign in earnest on some work automobile.  That reminded me of railroad enthusiasts who have bumper stickers that say such things, which reminded me of conversations with LCK about how we thought that was cringe, which reminded me that another thing that he and I had in common is that we were self-hating railfans, and, it’s like, okay, is that really healthy?

Anyway, the idea here was to ride to the Amtrak depot, sit there and eat a few snacks that I had with me, maybe see anything else along the way, and, then, leave town.

On the old MoPac right of way, I saw evidence of a little spur I guess just north of Broad Street, and the houses near it look new.  That would be so neat if this track was still here.  It would be pretty cool, if it could be part of a line that connects the Lake Arthur Branch with the DeRidder Branch.

There was a job kicking cars at the UP yard here.  There were some clean-looking LPG tank cars, too.  It’s too bad that this fence is here, but someone with a drone could do some good work here.  I just hate this damn fence, but I realize that probably the main purpose that it serves is to prevent people from getting killed or having limbs cut off.

There is the power, the UP 807 and the UP 655, both long-end forward.  The 807 looks bad.  Yeah, I guess that I am not getting a decent shot of these guys.  I’d have to get on top of the truck, and it wouldn’t be a good shot; so, it’s not worth the effort.  If they pull out toward the depot while I am over there, maybe I’ll get a shot of them; the 655 was the lead, meaning on the west end.  Both were long-hood forward, not good for switching.

When I was sitting there at the Amtrak station, I was thinking about my idea of a pair of passenger trains from Shreveport to there.  There should be one express train that goes to Lake Charles and back to Shreveport in one trip, if the track, like new sidings and double mainlines in some places, can be built for that purposes, and then an all-stops local train that lays over in Lake Charles, and tell the dispatchers that, if you absolutely have to delay one of these trains, delay the all-stops local train, because he is not trying to go the whole route round trip with one crew.

I ate my Power Crunch bar, blueberries, and Keto fat cup at the depot.  I noticed a peculiar thing on the west side of the fence there; there are a few feet of mowed grass.  So, evidently, someone goes on that side of the fence and mows a bit of grass there.

At 12:08 CDT, I rolled out of the Ryan Street Amtrak station, giving up for the day in Lake Charles and heading east.  I called Amtrak Julie and sortofkindof misunderstood when the #1 was likely to be in Rayne.  Well, it was running an hour later.

So, if it was running on time, it would be too late to get the shot at Rayne, but it’s running about an hour late, and I realized that, actually, that might be perfect timing.

I didn’t see any other railroad action.  I just got out of there after I finished eating and took a leak, thinking about how I just can’t hold this anguish about what was done to me, why I am here, in anymore.

Leaving Lake Charles

I had been thinking of and was planning on stopping at Iowa to check out the Lake Charles Sub, but, now, I was thinking that that is a bad idea, because doing so might impede my ability to get the shot at Rayne, but the other reason to not stop at Iowa is that whatever I would see there wouldn’t be good; the lighting is bad, it’s high-sun, I don’t have a telephoto lens, and that shot that I did this morning won’t be good until late this afternoon.  Thinking about the Lake Charles Subdivision made me think about LCK again.

I need to get a scanner, and I am thinking of getting my own 17-40mm/f4 lens, because it might be cheaper than I thought.

Let’s see; today is Monday.  So, there should be no Acadiana Railway activity in Crowley, and it’s probably not even worth checking out, because everything is terrible. 

So, I might have time today to chopsaw another one of those planks, prime the side of it, or just paint that other board; I probably should do that instead.  That would be a huge help.  I could install it as early as tomorrow afternoon.

Seeing the Starbucks right by the T-Mobile place north of Jennings made me think that, yeah, it totally makes sense to me why Starbucks’s stock price or EPS or whatever is falling; it has just become so ubiquitous and McDonald’sized, and coffee at places like McDonald’s and Burger King is getting better.

I entered Acadia Parish and turned the radio on, and on 105.1 FM, I heard Van Halen’s “Cradle Will Rock”, and, actually, that is sort of like the perfect song for today, even though I forget that the main ostensible theme of today is the LCK thing, but the other big huge thing is processing what my caretakers did to me, and it’s probably even bigger, like the LCK thing is worthy because it’s galling new information that is about an old friend rejecting me; so, that is a big deal, a reversal, a turn, whatever, whereas this personal thing is something that I have been experiencing for a very long time that has totally upended my life but is only now just starting to boil.

I have been imagining talking to Madelyn about this, the life-altering thing, not the issue with LCK.  Anyway, I decided that “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” was a more appropriate song for today.

Crowley – The Final Stand

I checked out the shot that I did last August in Rayne, but it was a little bit overgrown with vegetation.  So, I decided to go and check out the siding, and, when I did that, there were come Centerpoint Energy people blocking one side of the road east of the siding, and I had to stop for a while; then, they waved me through.

I accidently discovered a cool new shot at the west siding switch at Crowley!  Yeah, I think that I will photograph the train here; it’s a good wide-angle shot.  It’s a new shot.  I already got a new shot on the Lake Charles Subdivision this morning; I can get a new shot on the Lafayette Subdivision today.

Oh, so, earlier, when I was still on I-10, “Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel played on 105.1FM, and I was thinking, okay, but that’s an appropriate song for LCK.  That song is pretty cool, musically, but, lyrically, it’s a stupid song.  I didn’t realize when I was a kid that the song meant what it meant, but, eh.

At 13:15, I called Amtrak Julie.  The train should be out of Lafayette at 13:30, she told me.  So, at 13:50 it might be here?  So, I have to sit here for a half hour?  That was not what I was planning.

I figured that what I should do right now is go into town and check out the Acadiana Railway, and, then, that way, once the train comes here, I will be done with that, and, also, and this is a funny thing to say as a sheriff’s deputy passes, that’s less time that I would be sitting here attracting unwanted attention, risking such an encounter.

I stopped at South Avenue E and took some pictures of cars parked here, like I am wishing that someone was not who she was, and that is a terrible thing, but it’s also tough being someone like me; so, that is just reality.

Then, however, one of those cool old Nissan pickup trucks from decades ago caught my eye!

This brings back some memories!

Have another look at the cars, this time, from across the mainline.

This also brings back memories of specific persons.

Specifically, it brings back memories of specific persons in my life who had such trucks.

Let’s look at the rice mill.

The mill is expanding.

I guess that there will be a train coming here tomorrow, coming to this wonderful rice mill where there used to be cooler cars.

I then went to the western edge of town, where there are still some tracks and industries that I do not understand.

I haven’t really been out here since I realized that, according to Dewyane Derail Casteel, until recently, this diamond crossing was the way to get to the mill, and that the connecting track with the mainline was built by and-or for the BNSF Railway as a way to interchange with the Acadiana Railway, but that interchange doesn’t happen anymore.

So, that is a result of all of that asset-stripping, but, hey, I could change that with my idea!

Here I am way west of everything.  Okay, no cars back there.  Maybe I should photograph that there are no cars back there.  Yeah, Jim, do that.

There is still a bunch of old rail back here by the crossing at Roller Road.

Like, this diamond crossing is kind of losing its reason for existence.  That is why I am worried that it is in danger; there is still a customer back there, but it’s like there may be a way to arrange for that customer to do something else instead due to the cost of maintaining that crossing exceeds the revenue gained from serving whatever customers remain back there.

Then, north of the mainline, I came back eastward to South Western Avenue.

There is graffiti all over these cars.  I hate those people!  They’re ruining the appearance of good cars.

Okay, these cars have obviously been here for a long time, because you have vegetation overgrowing in this area.

The sun is coming back out.  It might be a good time for me to get back over to where I was before.

Damn, even those nice, new UP boxcars have graffiti all over them! Damn you, graffitists!  Absolutely awful people; I hate you, I legit hate you.  You robbed me of one of the few joys of my life.   It’s illegal.  It’s not yours.

Yeah, I would take a train of two of those new UP boxcars and no graffiti, maybe throw in a new CN boxcar with no graffiti, and, I don’t know, maybe a centerbeam flatcar and a bulkhead flatcar with no graffiti and with loads on them; that’d be a cool train.

So, it seems to me, as best as I can tell, this area was used by Supreme when the main track at its mill was being remodeled.

Anyway, I went back on the other side of the mill, by East Mill Street.

It’s barely good of what remains anymore, whatever that means.

Anyway, it’s time to return to the west siding switch for my final stand for the day, to get the westbound Sunset Limited.

Oh, mais, I could go for a little shrimp poboy right now, chere.

At 13:42, Amtrak Julie told me that the #1 was in the station in Lafayette.  So, I was a tad bit early here, but the train got delayed again.

I was thinking that this place might be a better place to shoot a drone shot rather than this ground-level shot, and that that would keep me I guess on the right side of the law.  So, I will just stand out here and wait.  I am here, and so, too, will be the train.

I am rationalizing, yes!  I am waiting here longer than I should, but I am rationalizing, just as I did on 4 October 2014, doing this, and this is an experiment.  It’s too high sun right now, but this is an experiment.

While I was out here waiting for the train, an interesting thought occurred to me as I was thinking about how I am going to experiment on this shot today and try to return here around the winter solstice when the lighting is better, to get a better-lit shot of it and, how, because of that, if I do just a one-off from today on social media, it’s not going to be this shot; the thought is that, especially now that the westbound Sunset Limited is running kind of late, and habitually so, I am seeing the #1 at the same time of day that I would see it in Raceland, Schriever, and Chacahoula before the 2012 schedule change.

So, you know, my famous shot of it in December 2003 of it at Melodia, like all these other shots that I did of the westbound #1 in the late fall or early winter before the 2012 schedule change, like all of that is done at the same time of day, especially when it’s a little bit late, like it is today, when the train runs through this area.  I just realized that.  It’s kind of neat. 

This is especially true at Lake Charles when it is on time.  That shot that I did at Edgerton or Vinton that I did a few years ago, like, yeah, that’s the same time of the day that the train passed through Raceland, Schriever, and Chacahoula before the 2012 schedule change.

Just after 14:00, the train finally came through here.

That’s it!  Compositionally, that shot is better than I thought that it was. 

It was cloudy, but that was beside the point, and, actually, that might help in some ways, because it might be better than high sun.

The big surprise is that the train had five passenger cars.  So, yay, we’re back to having five passenger cars rather than just four on the Sunset Limited, and, now, I am realizing that maybe I should try to do this shot closer to the road so that maybe I can get this elevator thing into the shot.  So, that’s a new perspective that I have; in fact, I will get on top of the truck right now and do it. 

I also need to document this Tyler Austin Harper tweet from today about fact checking being good in the abstract but that it’s a liberal obsession.  It’s a tweet from today, September 30, and I need to talk about it.

Fact checking is good in the abstract. But the liberal obsession with it — if we simply fact check Trump hard enough we’ll win! — is a brain worm. There is not a single American who is unaware Trump is a liar. Who is this imagined voter whose mind will be changed by a fact check? https://t.co/4twUzcsmR7

— Tyler Austin Harper (@Tyler_A_Harper) September 30, 2024

I will hop on top of the truck to do this shot.  I am closer to the road, and, actually, if I do this in the future, it keeps the cops away from me.

Okay, that is all for the pictures for today!

Epilogue

At the house, I made an omelet.  So, dietwise, despite traveling, today was good …  well, except at the end.

Looking at the pictures that I took today, when I got to the Fifth Avenue shots, something hit me, which is that, it’s kind of funny, these pictures remind me of something way back in my own history.  I had no telephoto lens today.

These pictures remind me of the pictures that I took, on film, of course, before I had a telephoto lens.  They also remind me of the kind of pictures that I took briefly in the digital era when I didn’t have a telephoto lens, but many of these are kind of good; they are kind of a break on the somewhat monotonous telephoto lens shots, especially on Port Rail, and it’s making me think about possibilities, and this train today had no graffiti on the side that I photographed.

So, I like these shots.  It’s a bad kit lens, but I am thinking about what I could do with a better lens of that focal-length range.

So, I am looking at Google Satellite view at some of the places I went today, particularly the first shot that I did today at Iowa and the last shot that I did of that Amtrak train at Crowley, and, in both cases, I had driven by those places before and had not noticed those shots.  Not so much for the last one at Crowley, but for the first one at Iowa, I was wondering, I have been here before, I scoped this out, why haven’t I seen this before?

Well, there is a good reason for that.  Google Satellite View shows both of those areas as highly treed.  So, the trees that were in both of those areas have been recently cleared.

That makes me worried, particularly for the Iowa shot, that there will soon be some sort of structures erected there that will impede the view.

That’s all.  I was too emotional to do anything like painting.  I am sad and angry. 

Shortly after 20:00, I went to Taco Bell to get three of the cantina chicken burritos.

Wow!  $21.17!  Holy crap!

So, The Mid-City Marine suggested that I look into frozen meals for when situations like this happen.  So, I will look into that.

Pete Rose did biologically and legally die, and it looks like Jimmy Carter will biologically and legally outlive him.

BREAKING: Major League Baseball legend Pete Rose has died at the age of 83, the medical examiner in Clark County, Nevada, confirmed.

Read more: https://t.co/ys7YDreXLn pic.twitter.com/oQwYbJPGnl

— ABC News (@ABC) September 30, 2024

I returned to the house relatively early today.  I had enough time to paint another coat of paint on that board, but I was just so emotionally distraught that I didn’t do it; so, I’ll just do it tomorrow.

Yeah, I have to look into those frozen meals, because even eating fast food this infrequently is still bad.

I ate these burritos and want to go to sleep and try to press forward tomorrow.

This has been a heck of a day, processing some big emotions in life and getting some new shots in the process, as I struggle to be reborn.

Merci.

Jim