Flying is always hell for me because it induces horrid headaches. Trains take me back to when I was a little girl. I always asked my father to take me to the Alexandria train station because of its architecture, which heralded back to the '30s. Georgia is famous for. For me, trains evoke the spirit of Walt Whitman.
Planes are snooty in the way they fly over America without looking at it.
Trains go through America, tasting and absorbing every bit of it. As the border between the North and the South, my hometown of Alexandria, Va., was a booming railroad town for years. But as the railroad business has ebbed, Potomac Yard, which was one of the most famous railyards in the country, was sold to developers. Before we moved to a more expensive neighborhood, train whistles sang me to sleep at night. I'd love to hear them again.