Photo art by Anika Tizliarishvili
After leaving the British Virgin Islands in 1981, Debbie and I flew to Mexico City and met up with my Iowa Legal Services pal, Jack Kegel, and another Iowa buddy, Skip Laitner who you may recall had testified in the Palo 13 trial on the day that all three of Jack’s suits appeared in court simultaneously. The four of us traveled by train to visit the Mayan ruins.
On the train from Mexico City to points south in Mexico. Photo by Jack Kegel.
This is the only picture I took of that trip which survived.
After visiting the ruins we split up and Debbie and I headed up north to San Diego to pick up my VW bug. That train ride proved memorable.
Please watch your step while exiting the train. Mexico 1981
It was a long train ride from the Mayan ruins near the Guatemalan border, up north, destination, Tijuana, Mexico which is across the border from San Diego, California.
The train took several days, and in the middle of the desert the train tracks diverged. The train we had been riding on was going to continue north to Nogales, Arizona, and we had to transfer to one heading northwest toward Tijuana and San Diego.
This is a map of the train system in Mexico. When Debbie and I were heading for San Diego we took the blue line along the west coast of Mexico, heading for the intersection circled in red.
It turned out that where these two rail lines intersected was in the middle of nowhere, there was no real town where the track split, just vendors who seemed to be living on the edge of civilization. When our northbound train stopped, a lot of people were disembarking, apparently to transfer to the train we wanted which would be heading west towards California.
Debbie and I were seated in the front of our car and our backpacks were on an overhead rack in the center of the carriage. I told Debbie she could get out and I would grab the backpacks and meet her outside. The problem was that as I tried to get to the middle of the carriage I was like a salmon fighting my way against the current, everyone seemed to be wanting to get off and heading downstream and it took me quite a while to get to our bags. Just as I pulled them down off the overhead rack, the train lurched once, and then started to move forward.
Several things went through my mind instantly: 1. Debbie had all the money. 2. Debbie had the train tickets. 3. I really did not want to go to Nogales on this train.
I pushed and shoved my way to the nearest exit, knocking aside people who were also panicking, and once I was standing in the door I discovered that the train had picked up quite a head of steam. Looking back, I saw Debbie receding in the distance and waving frantically. I didn’t think, I didn’t hesitate, I jumped.
In my memory things get a little hazy at this point. I do recall the brief sensation of flight before I bit the dust, landing flat on my face, and the impact scrambled my thinking even more. I remember that when I regained the gift of sight I was lying on my left side, cheek in the gravel, and two small children were squatting down, their faces inches from mine. They seemed to lose interest when I started to show signs of life and they turned and ran away.
I slowly sat up and was checking which of my limbs still worked, discovering large scraps the size of my fist on my left knee, thigh, forearm and the palms of my hands were completely raw. Debbie arrived at the scene of the accident and she helped me to my feet. Then, just to add insult to injury, the train which had moved about a quarter mile towards Nogales, stopped and started to back up.
A couple of the women vendors selling roasted corn were kind enough to offer me a seat and wash my scrapes off with bottled water and after an hour, as my wound scabs dried, I slowly lost the ability to bend my elbow and knee, making it difficult to limp up the stairs when our train arrived, destination Calexico.
In Calexico we spent the night in a youth hostel and the next morning I had to get up early because we had a train to catch, but first I had a running streak going, running three miles a day, never missing a day, and the streak had lasted more than two years at that point. I had to run three miles before we boarded our train.
I was up and moving, my scrapes were covered in an amber colored scab of interstitial fluid which resembled hardened maple syrup and which I hope I never see again. There was a school with a running track next to the hostel, and I don’t know how long it took me to hobble through my three miles, I am sure it took me at least four minutes to hobble around each lap, a quarter mile or 400 meters. It was agonizing because every bend of my knee or elbow felt like the skin was tearing. When I finished I told Debbie, “I now know what it will be like to run when I am 65 years old.”
I was 31 years old when I jumped off that train, and I was a very slow jogger on my best days. In the picture below I am competing in the World Masters Track and Field Championship in Lyon, France at the age of 66 and setting a personal best in the 400 meters of one minute and 14 seconds on an extremely hot day.
My prediction was way off, my running improved with age, if not my common sense when faced with having to make a quick decision.
Out for Justice 