(“The horses’ piaffes were schooled in hand as they rode the rails “)

These days we don’t think very much of the Russians as medal threats in international dressage competition, but that wasn’t always the case. Fifty years ago, bolstered by Big Rubles and the Soviet policy of Athletic Achievement as Indicator of Cultural Supremacy, their riders all but dominated. Ivan Filatov’s individual gold on Absent at Rome, the Tokyo and Mexico City Games led by Kizimov and Kalita, and Elena Petuskova’s gold on Pepel at the 1970 World Championships make my case— they were good!

Would it be a surprise that anything obsessive compulsive capitalist dressage trainers could think up could be matched or topped by the collectivist, authoritarian Soviet system? Back in 1960, their team horses were shipped overland by boxcar to the Rome Games. It was reported that never to upset a proven training routine, the horses’ piaffes were schooled in hand as they rode the rails across eastern Europe.

This anecdote got me thinking about trains in general. Before I discovered my fascination with all things aerial and airborne, I was into railroads. With a bit of assistance from my engineer grandfather, I “drove” a switching engine on my fourth birthday. As a pre-teen my dad would take me to the Pennsy’s marshalling yards to watch individual freight cars—a brakeman perched atop each—coast down off “the hump” and be shunted onto various sidings to be made up into trains bound for distant points all over the map. While in college, a friend and I would prowl the New Haven Railroad’s freight yards in the pre-dawn hours “just to see what was going on.” This very same friend and I had memorized the names of all the passenger trains that ran from Washington D.C.to New York and Boston and could proudly mimic the scratchy loudspeaker at Grand Central as we recited all the station stops (in order) along the route. For whatever reason, a bit of railroading is in my blood.

Driving from lesson to lesson every week I spend many hours in my car—occasionally five hours in a day. It can get boring. I mean, you can only play so many games of Free Cell or cut your toenails so many times before your mind turns as mushy as an ear-budded teenage mall queen’s .

I was rescued from the doldrums last week by the passing of a train. On reciprocal courses—the train headed north for Baldwin, me southbound on the parallel two-lane—I could first see the headlamp on the big CSX diesel-electric and then hear the throaty warble of its whistle, warning a random farmer’s truck or a strolling bovine as it approached each lonely grade crossing.

I rolled down my window to listen, and as the tone rose, then fell, I flashed back to a lecture in astronomy class on the red shift and the Doppler effect. For you American Studies majors with a minor in French Lit, that’s the perceived distortion of the wavelength of light or sound emitted by a source whose distance from you is changing.
OR SO THEY SAY—“they” being the government or Liberals or some too-big-for-their-britches Know It Alls who used to write the textbooks before the Texas Board of Education got a hold of them. But “what if whistles just sound like that?” I wondered. The Doppler Shift could just be another ruse being foisted on us!

Thus, my need for an experiment—what does a train whistle sound like if the train is standing still? You never get to find out because if they aren’t moving, there’s no reason to blow it.

Years ago, I’d have been able to conduct this test standing outside a factory gate—one with the kind of big steam whistle they would blow to signal men to work at shift change. No longer. It’s hard to find a factory whistle anywhere. Fact is, aside from China and Southeast Asia, it’s pretty hard to find a factory at all.

But fortune smiled upon me that day. As all these concerns tumbled through my mind, I encountered another train—again rolling along by the highway but this time going the same direction I was heading. Its engineer, too, would sound his whistle approaching each crossing. Carefully, I eased alongside the locomotive, matching his speed. It thundered. I moseyed. The drivers behind me seemed impatient, but it was hardly my fault the train was only going 48 miles per hour.

Up ahead, red lights flashing, the striped barrier coming down, the whistle sounding a long, continuous note, neither climbing nor falling. No relative motion—no Doppler effect—observed first hand, unfiltered by the MSM . . . . My preliminary conclusion—yes, Science does exist, at least in this instance.

My next plan is to invite a monkey to lunch and try to get a handle on this Darwin thing.

In a totally unrelated matter other than that this, too, involves the town of Baldwin (where that train was headed), while on the road one day I was trying to avail myself of the Florida DOT’s Five One One cellular service. This fully automated, interactive system is supposed to give you real time traffic reports on major roadways around the state.

“What city, county, or roadway do you need information for?” the machine asks me.

“Baldwin,” I answer, speaking as distinctly as I can.

“I’m sorry. What was that? Please say what city, county, or roadway you need information for,” it commands none too apologetically.

“Baldwin,” I repeat, a little slower and impeccably clearly.

“I’m sorry. What was that? I’m having trouble understanding you.

What city . . . ,” the Siri-esque voice drones back at me.

A half dozen such exchanges later—including one Hang Up and Start Over hoping to catch her in a better mood—I’m no closer to success, and my replies are more tinged with pique.

Finally at wit’s end, I sigh irritably and mimicking the most syrupy, unctuous Southern drawl I can muster (and while batting my eyelashes), I say, “BOWL-dwhy-ann,” dragging the word out to about eleven syllables.

Cheerfully, the machine responds, “Baldwin. Here is the traffic report you requested . . .”

As much as I’d prefer not to admit it, whoever programmed this device (and I can only guess the job had been outsourced to a distant land) has taught this computer to honor Macon/Alpharetta cotillion-speak but not what I construe as plain old English.

I’m beginning to develop a complex about this. It has happened before. One Saturday evening during a north Texas clinic I was giving, our group went to Japanese steakhouse on the highway outside Dennison. We might have been a trifle boisterous—the place was typically noisy. Our table chef built and flamed the obligatory onion volcano, made mild xenophobic jokes for our benefit, and flipped the shrimp tails into his toque.

At meal’s end, the proprietor—an older gentleman and émigré from the old country—stopped by our table to be sure we’d been cared for well and would come back. His eyes falling on me, he inquired politely, “And what country do you come from?”

His whole exposure to the American tongue was through his local clientele. He’d have had a far easier time with the 511 “lady” than I did!