Thoughts while riding the train north to Connecticut

I remember when I was half as tall as I am now the three of us took the train from San Diego to somewhere beyond Kansas City, my mother, my younger sister, and me.

I remember using the toilets on the train, bleary-eyed and knocked from side to side with the movement of the train cars on the tracks. When the toilet flushed I could see daylight, I could see the hot desert ground rushing beneath the train.

Did they really flush to the ground like that? It seems unallowable, but that is a truth that I remember.