Where is the train ? (I have found the beef)

It s the funny thing when you take trip to a country several years apart... You remember some things very well, because you heard them the last time you were there, and they are still vivid  to you.

But time has passed and most people have forgotten what you still remember so well...

A long time ago ( I was a student then, so we are speaking past century - dear God, yes I am THAT old ! ) everybody was yelling at any time, and  for anything :

"Where is the beef?"

In my classes, in the restaurants, during the parties... Every where !

One of my teachers even wrote that sentence on top of my first management class paper... And it got me into a deep state of despair for I had NO idea how I was supposed to put "beef" in a paper on the "grapevine theory for better work organization"...

I did not have a TV in my dorm for the first weeks of the semester, 

so I was totally lost win this "where is the beef" thing !

Till I finally got a chance to see on tv that add for ... Actually I am not sure... Burger King ?

With the charming old lady yelling 

"where is the beef" with a loud enthusiasm, and about 500 hundreds times a day during all tv shows.

SInce then, it s an expression I often use ... let's say "internally". 

Meaning by that I often scream inside myself "where is the beef" 

when I mutter about an empty politican speech

Or when I look for meaning in an unbearable tv show

Or simply when I look for something

(And yes my son when he was a baby probably assumed "beef" was a magical word used for about anything on earth, for when I m looking for something, my glasses, a lost key, my bag, I always start with a "where is the .." 

happily ending in 

"beef" 

For most of the time, it just makes me happy to shout that for nothing.

Sooooo, back to my trip today -

Yesterday, Saturday, was St Patrick day for parade and party, and I decided to go to "cowtown" to take part in the festivities.

Cowtown being, for all innocent beings outside the cattle world or outside Texas, the town of Fort Worth where most of the cows (and before the 60's, horses and mules) are sold in the Us.

So I took my proud Chevrolet (I love my car by the way. You American have a car industry that is simply "reborn" from its ashes and you are making great cars again, I wish the French industry could do the same miracle soon)

And headed to proud Fort Worth

(who really does NOT want to be mistaken with a Dallas suburbs, thanks to their pride and strong identity, and deserve to be visited for its a different place and atmosphere from Dallas really)

And I can tell you the truth : in Fort Worth,  they say "where the West begins"

Well, that s really how I feel about it.

Cowtown is a great place to get your first smells and sounds of the west, meet nice people, and see incredible horses, mules and cows...

And here I took, for the first time of my life, a ride on a bull !!

Ok, I was wet as a fish, the weather was just as rainy as Ireland (a sure tribute of Texas to its Irish roots) , this explains the crumbling hair and sticky shirt - but triumph was there as you can see. (For me) (the bull seemed slightly less impressed by the situation)

I have been a bit disappointed by the strange look and the furious NO MA'AM answer of the bull's owner  when I asked very politely If I could go to the front of the bull and "pet his face" ( probably not the best choice of words, by the way, and I certainly need to improve my cowgirl vocabulary) 

and if you can enlighten me about the long horn handling, I would love that, for being on that fierce and strong beast was really a gorgeous feeling ... I felt just as "queen of the world" as the time in Mongolia , when I rode a Bactrian camel (I swear it s true - check this to see a brief movie of my trip there https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gkhbUwUzrdc). 

And I d love to learn more about this incredible animal.

So I DID FiND THE BEEF FOR SURE...

And then comes my train story...

At the end of the day, I decided to come back to downtown Dallas under an impressive and very "thunder and lightning" rain, around 6pm,

And, as I was about to leave "cowtown", I got arrested by loud bells and flashing red lights , and even closed fences, in front of a railway.

Obviously a train was coming.

And as the obedient (and very afraid of US police ) citizen that I am, I of course stopped, and decided to wait for the train that was announced loudly.

Wait

Wait

Wait

(You can take more than a minute between each wait, and you will still be under the real time this wait lasted)

And to my obedient (and very afraid of US police) citizen's horror, I started to see the cars behind me actually TRESPASSING the fences and the flashing light, going left where there is no fences, and crossing the railways despite the warnings...

Trespassing in the US ! I was shocked ! 

And as the obedient (and very afraid of Us police) citizen that I am, I decided of course to wait for the train and , THEN, cross

To wait for the train, and THEN cross

To wait for the train, and THEN cross

And you can insert about ten minute between each sentence, and you will still be faster than that train... that never came.

Never.

I cheated.

And I took the forbidden left way too, rushing through the railway with sweat in my back and red on my cheeks,

I never saw that train, though I spent about 20 minutes waiting in front of that flashing and yelling fence.

is here is my question, you figured it.

I ve got the beef...

But,

WHERE IS THE TRAIN ?!?