You’re probably all familiar with the train the City of New Orleans; it still leaves Chicago every day for New Orleans, and it was, and probably is, still one of the fastest overland trips in the US. This particular photograph is from the early to mid 60s and the reason I’m showing it to you that is because I was a senior in high school and it was our senior trip to New Orleans…30 boys, 90 girls. And this [photograph] is my girl, and her name is Mitzi (she’s part of the story).

On the way back, [Mitzi] said, ‘we were going to get some souvenirs’, but we never got around to it. So she said ‘we’ll find something’. So we started to roam up and down the aisles [of the City of New Orleans] and we could do pretty much anything we wanted on the train because the train conductors said ‘we are cordoning off these cars for these high school kids’. So we looked around and looked around and finally she said ‘this is my gift to you’. So she got out her nail file and about fifteen/twenty minutes later she came back to the seat–and one of her fingernails was broken–but she brought me a piece of the City of New Orleans.

Exhibited by Frank

Transcript edited by Susan Golland