On an evening in August of 1961 Dick, along with a few hundred other 14-16 year old kids, boarded a train at Seattle's King Street Station bound for Chicago.Although American Airlines had ushered in transcontinental travel on Boeing's new 707 two years earlier, the heyday of the
commercial jet airliner was yet to come and this was still the era of passenger train travel in the U.S.
After digging through old family photo albums and researching the history of the two train lines that provided passenger service between the two cities, Dick believes that the train he rode was the Northern Pacific
Railways "Mainstreeter" (shown here near Missoula, Montana.Dick and the other kids (including his friend Rodney, and his girlfriend Eva --- who would "dump" him during the trip) were off on a 3,000 mile-plus journey to Miami Beach where they would be
among 14,000 teenagers attending the
American Lutheran Church's five day long International "Luther League" convention. (Only Lutherans would subject themselves to the 90-plus degree heat and 90-plus humidity level of August days in Miami).Dick recalls the convention as being pretty B-O-R-I-N-G overall, although one of the highlights was an address by Martin Luther King, Jr. (Much to his surprise and amusement, while searching the Internet for historical information on the convention, Dick ran across a half-hour long film clip of the convention on one of the Lutheran Church's Web sites. Push the "slider" below the video screen on the Web page to the right to about the 7:51 minute mark in order skip the introductory remarks about the next E-V-E-N M-O-R-E B-O-R-I-N-G Y-E-T Luther League Convention to be held in Detroit, and you'll see about two and half minutes of footage showing the kids arriving in Miami by train, being bussed to their hotels, and
frolicking --- if Lutherans can be said to "frolic" -- on the beach. Then push the slider right to the 14:20 minute mark to watch about two and a half minutes of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s remarks. The rest is mainly B-O-R-I-N-G convention sessions, except for footage of the teens making "fashion" statements with their early '60's hairdos and clothing. Push the slider to 23:50 and 29:45 to catch 30 second clips of beach scenes, and finally to 30:45 to see the teens running like hell to catch the train out of Miami after five days of listening to mind-numbing religious babble).
But back to the Chicago part of the trip. After spending two nights riding upright in a
daycoach eastbound out of Seattle and being fed unpalitable "food" (worse than the "C" rations he would eat a few years later while serving in the Air Force) in the "special" dining cars assigned to the Luther Leaguers, Dick and the group arrived in Chicago for a two night stay at the Conrad Hilton Hotel (named after the founder of the famous hotel chain and great-grandfather of the notorious Paris Hilton). In 1985, that hotel was renovated and renamed as the Chicago Hilton and Towers, and today another hotel in Chicago owned by the same company is known as the Conrad Chicago.Dick recalls that in addition to having a really fine meal (for a change) in the hotel's main dining room, he
attended a major league baseball game in the evening at Comiskey Park, home of the Chicago White Sox. (At the time, Seattle only had a minor league team, the Seattle Rainiers, named after the Rainier Brewing and Malting Company, purveyors of some of the worst excuse for beer that has ever passed Dick's lips). Unfortunately, since Dick was
far younger that the legal drinking age (and accompanied by adult members of the church who probably drank beer on the sly in closets back home rather than in the many neighborhood taverns which catered to Scandinavian fisherman and shingle mill workers in that part of Seattle where the church was located), he could only wash down the ballpark fare with Coke rather than any of the premium suds that were brewed in the Windy City.
The trip lasted about two weeks or so. The only overnight stays were in Miami and Chicago, but the group got in some sightseeing in
Washington, D.C., at George Washington's Mount Vernon estate, and St. Augustine, Florida.Dick and some friends from the group hiked all of the way to the top of the Washington Monument (who says kids are smarter than adults), and chipped in some money to buy their tour bus driver a new joke book (the ones he told were real "groaners").
Unfortunately, the train made only the briefest of stops after departing Washington, D.C. on the return leg of the trip to S
eattle, so there was no further opportunity for sightseeing or decent dining on the way home. If the kids had been lucky enough to be on one of more luxurious trains of the era, such as the Great Northern's Empire Builder (Amtrak still operates a train by that name between Seattle, Portland and Chicago) or the Northern Pacific's North Coast Limited, they might have been riding in style and comfort. Finally, after what seemed to have been an interminable journey back to Seattle, the weary teenagers fell off the train swearing never to ride the rails again.
