I will never forget the storm, “Debra!” Tarville Davis called me to help him round up two of Vick Guarisco’s hogs that got loose at Riverside Packing Co. We found one of the hogs in a muddy, sloppy pen so Tarville tried to lasso him. They wrestled in the mud for about 15 minutes until Tarville finally tied him up. Well, when I looked at them, they had so much mud on them that I didn’t know which one was the hog.
We tied the hog to a small tree and “zoom,” a big puff of wind uprooted the tree and took the hog with it. Needless to say, we never saw the hog again!
When was the last time you rode on a passenger train? If you haven’t, you should try it. If you want a thrill, go by train over the New Orleans bridge and look out of the windows. It appears that you are suspended in air and all you can see is the river and no boundaries whatsoever. You are so afraid, you are almost paralyzed.
For more thrills and beauty, one should travel through the mountains in Alaska, where the beauty of the country is at its height in July, August and September. Also, Switzerland is one country where beauty is in everything you see, from the grape vineyards to the majestic mountains where the train travels from mountain to mountain over deep ravines and vast amounts of water.
The most beautiful train ride I ever had was from Paris through Austria, Switzerland, all through Italy from the Alps to Palermo in Sicily. All the houses had red roofs and through the valleys and rolling hills it was so beautiful and peaceful — with the sheep and cattle grazing in the sunshine as the train sped along on the tracks.
I enjoyed riding these trains with Tarville Davis and my brother “Baby” Guzzetta. I’ll never forget when we were eating dinner on the train. “Baby” ate fish, I had my alma mater – spaghetti – and Tarville had a 16 oz. steak, the largest one they had on the train. He knew that my brother would pay the bill. All of a sudden, while going from Switzerland into Italy, we went through a tunnel. There were many tunnels on this route, approximately 30 in all and very dark. When we came out of the tunnel, Tarville noticed that his steak was missing. He was very upset and kept saying, “All I had was one bite!”
I noticed a couple of tables away that there was a fellow with a steak that had only one bite taken out of it. I told Tarville that I suspected that this man came over and took his steak while we were going through the dark tunnel. I told Tarville there were more tunnels to go through so when we get in another one to go and get your steak.
Well, low and behold, we ran into another tunnel, so Tarville sneaked over to retrieve his steak. But it was so dark he couldn’t see so he went to the wrong table where an old lady was eating chicken. When Tarville came back to our table, the old lady let out a scream in Italian that her chicken had been stolen. I told Tarville to hurry up, wrap the chicken in a napkin and threw it under the table, just as through it had fallen there. When things cooled off, we left the Dining Car and went into another coach, two cars away. And we could still hear the old lady, fussing and complaining and arguing with her waiter about her chicken – all in Italian!
* The End *