Once Upon A Time......

Never thought I'd be a blogger...but have been persuaded to give it a go.

When reflecting on a page title, the first thing that popped into my mind was something to do with the Blue Mountain Express. No, it's not a quick-effect premium Jamaican coffee. It is a place and time from another world that shaped how I see the world and people and life.

World War II was won by the summer of 1945 and by fall the Foths--Oliver, Gwendolyn, Louanne, and Dick (that's me)---sailed out of New York harbor on the S.S. Gripsholm (a Swedish liner on its last troop-ferrying activity) for Alexandria, Egypt. From there, we embarked for India and the most formative 4 years of my life. I was three and a half.

We ultimately settled in the scorching plains of far South India in the city of Madurai, a bustling city of 500,000 then and millions now. Schools for Europeans were many miles to the northwest in the Nilgiri Hills (the Blue Mountains). To be more precise, about 300 miles. It was there that Louanne and I went, she first and then both of us. Coonoor was one of several beautiful and cool "hill stations" created after 1799 when the area was acquired by the East India Company in a treaty. It was--and is--the home of Hebron School.

Hebron was British and female to the core. So, my education began in an English girls boarding school, which--true to such traditions--accepted little boys until they reached 10 and became more fully aware of their surroundings. At that point, they were shipped out to Breeks, a boys school in Ooticumund, the "queen of the hill stations," 18 kilometers further up the mountain.
Hebron was my home from 1947 to 1949, except for a 3 month vacation each year with my family in the plains during the cooler season.

That education was an experience unto itself. That is for another time. It was the "how we got there" part that captured me. We went by train...steam train....engines made in Switzerland....open-windowed wooden railway carriages. It was, literally, the little train that could. The Blue Mountain Express.

The rail trip from Mettapalayum to Coonoor is 29 kilometers (about 19 miles). The train climbs to about 6,000 ft in that distance so it takes 3 hours. The gradients are steep, switchbacks many, and views breathtaking.

My dad wrote on January 16, 1947:

"I had promised Dick a ride in the front coach. The mountains are very steep, so the engine pushes the train up instead of pulling it....you can get a wonderful view of all the scenery as you come up. Dickie was quite thrilled by it, and it was a lovely sight. It was a clear sunshiney day and everything sparkled. There were lots of wildflowers out; wild canna lilies and morning glories, and the orange lantana are at their best now... there was a scarlet flower, about the size of a small morning glory, that trailed all over everything. The numberless waterfalls are very pretty right now, and many of them come down like ribbons dropping down hundreds of feet over the rock cliffs.

At the start of the journey on the plain, there are rice fields, sugar cane patches, banana groves (with bananas growing so close together that a person can scarcely squeeze between them). As you begin to ascend the mountains, you notice the huge growths of bamboo. Each one grows to a great height and thickness. Farther up at about 2,000 ft. their are coffee plantations everywhere, and then at about 4,500 ft. the tea plantations begin."

I didn't know about Hebron School, but the Blue Mountain Express (the slowest express in the world, no doubt!) captured my heart. Open rectangular windows...heads in, so as not to catch a cinder in the eye. It was gaggles of people in multi-colored saris and turbans; vendors hawking wares on train station platforms; the smell of curry and engine smoke. This is the train that put the wind in window. The higher the train chugged the cooler the air and the cooler the views. It was cooler than anything I had ever known.

The Blue Mountain Express remains for me to this moment a metaphor for adventure and learning. It is tea at 4 o'clock, British discipline, Indian beauty and richness, a dozen dialects, a hundred smells...and it just .....moves.

The Blue Mountain Express........ color and perspective on the journey.

All abooaard!