Tea and Sugar Train

This train travels the longest stretch of railroad track on earth without a turn — 299 miles.  There’s a bank car, theater car, grocery store car, a car filled with doctor’s offices, one that has a chapel.  Sixty train cars.  A mile long.  Most do not have a passage way between them, so people who work in one seldom see those who work in another. The “Tea and Sugar” meanders more than a thousand miles across South Australia, stopping whenever someone waves it down.  Its arrival in remote places is the social event of the week.  All the families linger for hours buying impulsively, trying to extend the moment when there is laughter and community.  

• Photo Wagon
  John Coffer turned his back on modern times to wander America in a wagon pulled by oxen, stopping only to take portraits with his antique camera.  Coffer traveled at two and a half miles an hour for five years. 25 states. 10-thousand miles.  He crisscrossed America so slowly, everywhere he went, folks joked he was a temporary resident. Coffer captured old fashioned images of modern America.
• A Selfless Man 
  A surveyor from Valentine, Nebraska, was charting the land of the Rio Grande. He stopped for lunch and took a nap. When he awoke, poor people had gathered to eat his scraps. That bothered Frank Ferree. It bothered him so much he sold all his land to buy food and medicine for the poor. He kept nothing for himself. For 40 years Frank Ferree fed thousands on both sides of the Rio Grande. Five Presidents of Mexico have given him gold medals. He melted them down and bought beans.
• Homesteading Class
  There’s a mountain near Glenwood Springs, Colorado, the locals call “Misery Heights.” The last cowboys left there in the 1930s. It was too remote to raise horses, too cold to grow crops. Just right to teach something about life. Jack Snoble teaches a course in homesteading. Class size, one student.
• VOLUNTEER CAFE SAVES TOWN 
  There are a lot of little towns in farm country fighting for their lives. In Havana, North Dakota, the sun hasn’t set. When the town’s cafe went under, all 158 people in town volunteered to cook. It became something of a competition. They made $51,000, enough to open a new grocery store, build sidewalks and put an archery range. Now they dream of a jacuzzi.
• Photographer for Life
  Photographer for Life Milton Rogovin grew old watching his neighborhood grow up, sharing the yearbook of their lives.  He was still photographing them at age 100, surrounded by friends who were now taking his picture — the “forgotten ones,” who did not forget him.