AMERICANA: Romantic Excursion

As the Lackawanna Railroad's crack Phoebe Snow pulled out of Hoboken and roared west last week, a private Pullman car was attached to the rear, with a party of eight elderly Negroes aboard. The leader and bill payer of the group was a tall, spare man, duded up in a blinding sports shirt and necktie, a sharp-lapelled suit, jaunty Ivy League cap and high-button shoes. He was no potentate from Africa, but William Tyler, 78, a retired Pullman porter, and he was relishing the fulfillment of a lifetime dream.

Last spring Tyler, living quietly in a Los Angeles rooming house, hit the Irish Sweepstakes for $68,000 after taxes. Grandly, he invited his wife, his landlady and five old friends to join him on a romantic, cross-country journey. Most of his companions had never been out of California, and Tyler wanted them to see the rest of the country, as he had in his pillow-plumping days. "When I called the Southern Pacific to hire a car," he recalled, "I guess they thought I was kind of goofy. When the man told me it would cost around $7,500, I told him, 'Fine. I'll send you a check for $8,500 in case it's any more.' "

From Los Angeles the private Pullman rolled to El Paso, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Niagara Falls, New York and Chicago, with leisurely, de luxe stopovers in each city. This week Tyler and friends headed for San Francisco and home. The whole excursion will cost the old porter about $15,000. Said Tyler: "I've got enough money left over to last me the rest of my life. But if I hit the Sweepstakes again in October, I'll hire another car and come back."