One thing about this short has bothered me since I was a literal child. Very early on, Pete announces that the train will got to “Albuquerque, Amarillo, Azusa, and all points west.” Indeed, the way from Burbank to Pomona, the trip Mickey is taking in this short, will go by way of Azusa, if not Albuquerque and Amarillo, and of course you’d hit them in a different order than they’re mentioned in the short. (Actually, if you currently took a train from Burbank to Pomona, you wouldn’t hit Azusa, because you’d go via downtown LA, but let’s pretend you’re doing a straight shot.) The bigger issue is that you’d hit all these points going east. There is west of Burbank—you can go west fifty or sixty miles before getting to the ocean—but the only cities west of Burbank tend to be ones you’ve only heard of if you know LA.
Mickey is, for reasons, taking the train from Burbank to Pomona. That’s fine; people do that. However, he wants to take Pluto with him. Pete tells him under no uncertain terms that there are No Dogs Allowed on the train and kicks them off. Mickey packs Pluto into his suitcase and gets on the train. Pete figures out that Mickey’s got his dog, and the rest of the short is a chase around the train, where Mickey and Pluto try to escape from Pete long enough to go less than forty miles.
Honestly it’s hard for me to remember that this is before you’d just take the 210. That was probably the freeway I rode on most as a kid, because it was the one we took to my grandparents’ house. (In Arcadia, another one of those “A” cities!) The idea of taking a train ride for less than forty miles is kind of a strange one. My daughter’s godmother visited us on the train, but that’s more like seventy and means avoiding Seattle traffic. At this point, there’s the question of how long it would have taken Mickey to drive, because I don’t even know if there was a highway going that direction, much less the freeway there is now.
A few years later, Nick and Nora would have trouble traveling to visit his parents with Asta because they didn’t want to put their dog in a baggage car, but at least they could do it at all. Pete kicked them off the train entirely. Now, maybe it’s because he’s a cat—he talks about owning one, but canonically, he is one—but either way, he fully kicks them off the train. Amtrak’s currently got information about traveling with a pet on their trains, and it’s true that Pluto seems larger than Asta. Though it’s hard to tell, all things considered. Still, it’s apparently a thing people were more likely to do in those days.
Oh, it doesn’t matter; this is all just a silly excuse to get Pete chasing Mickey and Pluto around in the enclosed confines of a train. I do know that. It’s the last short where Pete was Mickey’s antagonist, meaning it’s right before we start getting into Bing Crosby-era Mickey, where he’s just a jovial suburbanite. Bing Crosby-era Mickey wouldn’t take a train for that distance. Even if the 210 wouldn’t start construction for another five years after the last classic-era Mickey Mouse short.
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