The terrain is flat here. The sky is gray. The landscape has grays and greens, the wispy branches of trees There is the sandy brown of the AMTRAK station, with white-framed windows. Plain Folk, Mennonites, I think, are waiting for a train. #4, the Eastbound Southwest Chief will take them to Fort Madison or Galesburg.On this drab platform, in this drab land , a yellow stripe in the concrete separates the safe area from the danger zone.The slip stream of a speeding train will suck the hapless in. And the only other bright colour is the red of a Coke machine.

The black clad passengers, the whole scene, could be in Czarist Ukraine, or the Ruthenian province of the Habsburgs. Imagine the scene in 1905. These Mennonites would morph into Jews, beards, felt hats, and overcoats. The smart ones would be on the way to North America and they would escape pogroms, famines, genocide and bet on the sketchy promises of New York or Winnipeg or Chicago.

The trains modernize and change from steam to diesel/electric. The horns are louder than steam whistles, but the waiting remains the same, for a train to take a passenger to the unknown.