Tag Archives: train

All aboard the Capitol Limited

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I’m on the train from Chicago to Pittsburgh, where after a wait I’ll catch another train into Altoona. If all goes well — it sometimes does — I’ll arrive in about 12 hours. I preferred the old days of the direct route, the Broadway Limited, but there you have it. In these days of the convenience of 24-hour shopping and the handheld smartphone, the direct route has been eliminated, a tactic that makes life worse, not better, well, at least for me. Although I suppose some could and would say that 24-hour shopping and smartphones aren’t really a step forward, either. I’m on the fence.

I was lucky to get a seat on the Superliner’s lower level. There are two great things about this: (1) you don’t have to drag your luggage up the steep, narrow stairs, and (2) you don’t have to negotiate the same steep, narrow stairs at all hours of the night to use the downstairs facilities, a more important factor for me when I had 2.3 pounds of deadweight fibroid flattening my bladder. I’m finding another benefit now — so far, there have been only one or two others here on the lower level, depending on the stage of the journey. (We just picked a third person up.)

There seems to be a high number of urchins aboard tonight. Two in particular have caught my attention: Levi and Rose. I know their names because they’ve been running around, blocking the steps, and bumping into people, and their ineffectual father keeps admonishing them by name, loudly, and giving them orders, both of which they ignore. When told to sit, they did, but that lasted for less than a minute, about the same as the dogs I’d seen ordered to sit and stay at the veterinarian’s office the day before. Earlier, the same man had told me that he was going to be first into the café car because his kids need to eat, spoken as though their lives depended upon it. Most parents who travel with their children on the train seem to know the “rules” — bring plenty of entertainment, food, and drink. Clearly, no one had filled him in, and he had not figured it out on his own. Another reminder that parenting doesn’t come naturally to everyone.

The other person I noticed was a nerdy young man, perhaps 30, reading a photocopied article and penciling in notes. I caught references to Kierkegaard and something about the Christian religion’s basis on faith, not philosophy — my awkward and perhaps inaccurate paraphrase. What would he have said if I had observed, “That’s a rather narrow viewpoint of Christianity, don’t you think?” Philosophical though he may be, he didn’t ignore his bodily needs, making at least two trips for food — clearly not an ascetic philosopher.

I started to write a letter and before I knew it, my iPhone was showing the time change and the train was nearly to Ohio. Probably by 11:30 p.m., I was sound asleep, having woken up a few times to adjust position, but not waking with an urgent need to go. I was startled when the conductor tapped me awake outside Pittsburgh, and almost as startled to notice that more people had boarded without disturbing me. Here at the Pittsburgh train station, waiting for the Pennsylvanian to Altoona, I’m mostly startled to feel refreshed. Here’s another recommendation for successful overnight train travel: earplugs.

Blast from the past (Horseshoe Curve, Wopsononock [Wopsy] Mountain

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My brother sent me these photos, taken September 1988 in Pennsylvania at the Altoona Railroaders Museum, Horseshoe Curve, and Wopsononock (Wopsy) Mountain. I don’t know if this last is from the time I slid and rolled partway down the mountain until the brush caught me.

Altoona Railroaders Museum
Altoona Railroaders Memorial Museum
Horseshoe Curve
Horseshoe Curve National Historic Landmark
Wopsy or Wopsononock Mountain
Wopsononock (Wopsy) Mountain overlook

The noon of the moon

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On the Wolverine to Chicago

This is a slightly odd thing. I’m on the train from Ann Arbor to Chicago, and I suddenly notice that the surroundings seem somehow familiar, then realize that I am sitting in the same seat as I sat in outbound. I know this because the tray table has the same distinctive marks, and the electrical outlet has the same plastic clip holding it. Both times I chose it because it was the first empty seat that I came to. I suppose Amtrak runs the same cars back and forth between Chicago and Pontiac, but still it seems funny to get the same seat twice on the same round trip.

I had a very good visit with my friends, and my state of mind is complicated by warring and opposite needs — one to be alone and one to be around people. Of course, I will be alone, but I’m not sure that this is good for me now.

I do feel better than I did, which demonstrates the power that hormones have over me. It’s a relief to have some control over myself back and not to feel the arms of the abyss eagerly snatching me toward it and the temptation to succumb.

The other night in Ann Arbor seemed bright to me, even though it was cloudy and the nearly full moon hidden. I mentioned that I was surprised by the seeming amount of light pollution in the area, and my friend and I discussed the topic and the contribution of the full moon.

This morning, though, there could be no doubt. I woke up at 5 a.m. and was surprised to see that my borrowed bedroom was bright enough to navigate easily. I looked out the kitchen window and saw diffuse light, deep shadows, and a clear sky over a still, eerie winter landscape that I could think of as my own, as the only witness to it at that early hour.

When I looked out my bedroom window, I saw the moon high up in the sky, making the moment the noon of the moon. The areas of shadows and those of silvery light combined with the lack of color made me feel like I was seeing the world through the eyes of another species, or perhaps seeing a different world altogether.

The noon of the moon . . . I like that.

All aboard Amtrak

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I’m on my way, I don’t know where I’m goin’,
I’m on my way, I’m takin’ my time, but I don’t know where.

Paul Simon, “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”

Since my father passed away in 2001 and since Amtrak eliminated the train from Chicago that stopped in Altoona, I haven’t taken Amtrak very often. Even when I did, the trips had become uneventful. No one spoke to me any more or did anything of note, except for the Amish man who wanted to know where he could charge his mobile phone — that is, until today (7.20.06). Nothing of note happened today, really, unless you count my meeting a couple of characters, the type of people who make me realize how reclusive I am, and why.

I was on my way to Ann Arbor, Michigan, a scheduled 4.5-hour trip. It’s just long enough to read, write, and nap without starting to get antsy.

At Hammond/Whiting, Indiana, a woman in late middle age with a heavily seamed face came and stood next to the empty seat by me and announced loudly that there was nowhere to sit. I moved my straying purse and indicated the empty seat. I don’t know why she couldn’t have pointed out to me that it had encroached onto the seat and that she wanted me to move it. The direct approach is not dramatic enough, I suppose.

Plopping down, she announced, again loudly, in my direction, “I hate to ride backward.” Thank you for sharing that insight into your character with every person in this car and the next.

She seemed itchy — itchy to chat. I appeared to be engrossed in writing, while the girls across the aisles were doing college work. Thwarted, frustrated, and itchy, she pulled out a cell phone and dialed an aunt, with whom she had the world’s most mundane, pointless conversation at approximately the same decibel level found on the typical Rolling Stones one-more-time tour. At any rate, I know she loves her aunt, because she announced it several times to the phone, just before starting to cry. For me, there was no warning and nowhere to hide.

Finally she hung up and soon disappeared. I had a feeling she’d gone to the cafe car — there’s nowhere else to go on a train — but at the same time I really, really wanted coffee. I’d been up since 4:30 a.m., and I really, really wanted coffee. So I risked it. I ended up sitting at the table across from hers; later, she left, then returned and sat with me. I managed to keep up my level of engrossment, so she, still itchy, tried to lure the conductor into the realm of tedious chatter. He answered her questions while deftly fending her off; he seemed more comfortable talking old-time rail talk.

Later, when she and I were both back in our seats, at one of the stops — I think it was Jackson — she said something like, “They stop where they stop, don’t they?” Honestly, I did not know how to respond to this observation, so I smiled weakly and promptly fell asleep.

I hope her return trip is planned for any day but Sunday — the day of mine.

Meanwhile, the visit to the cafe car proved that coffee will be my undoing. There I met the attendant. Before I could make my request, he had shared with me his knowledge and/or opinion of organ harvesting in China, the economy, George W. Bush, and the intelligence of people who pay extra for business class for no real perks or benefits. I admit that this verbal onslaught left me speechless. After I got my order in, I heard commentary on the price of flat-screen TVs; his wife’s boss, who bought one when they were $10,000; and the reputed stinginess of several ethnic groups his wife represents or might as well represent — I think that was the gist of it. And all of this in five minutes or less, with little (no) encouragement from me. It was a verbal flood, unstoppable.

When my garrulous seatmate placed both her orders, I wonder if she managed to get in a word or two.

Or had she met her superior?

End of the line

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My parents were in their 40s when I was born in 1961, so they were of a different generation than the parents of most of my friends. In addition, my mother came from a small town, my father from a farm, so they had not grown up in our urban/suburban wastelands. My father especially did not have much as a child — newspapers, but no radio and no luxuries. His days were spent working on the farm and driving the two mules; I think he told me he went to school through eighth grade, but his sisters said that he often didn’t go at all so he did not have a steady education although I know he would have wanted one. My mother left school in 11th grade. I don’t know what all she did, but I do know she spent some time working as a maid for people who treated the dog better than they did her.

It’s interesting to think how the world changed in such a short time for people of my parents’ generation. By my friends’ standards, we were poor; by my parents’s standards, my dad’s job at Ford Motor Company had made them more affluent than they had ever been, even living in a mobile home as they did. By 1961, when I was born, they could even afford to buy a new, bigger mobile home. They had things they could never have imagined — refrigerator, camera (a $3 black-and-white Kodak), black-and-white television, radio (kept on the kitchen counter and often listened to during storms and blackouts), vacuum cleaner, and so forth. The day we got a telephone was exciting — my mother was so amazed that I memorized the number immediately — but not nearly as much as the day the color television arrived. (As an aside, I was heartbroken over getting rid of the black-and-white TV, and to be honest I never warmed up to the colour one. To this day, I don’t like colour movies or television nearly as much as black and white, and the overexposed sunniness of an Ingmar Bergman black-and-white film or the surreal black-and-white Mrs. Peel Avengers episodes still evoke a kind of joy in me that I can’t explain — perhaps it does have to do with them feeling like they take place in a different world that I feel closer to.)

My parents (and, I think, their generation) loved gadgets and all the newfangled time-saving devices. My mother in particular always wanted to go shopping (something she normally didn’t like) if she thought she was going to end up with, say, an electric can opener.

It’s hard to say about her because she passed away relatively young (64), but at some point technology outstripped my dad’s ability to understand it. I tried to explain computers to him and even showed him my notebook, but he could never quite understand how the words got to the screen or how they got on paper, or how my brother and I could send messages back and forth instantly, or how I could get the news online. It confused him since he didn’t witness it every day, although I think that he, like many older people today, would have embraced it given the opportunity. At a certain point, though, he did learn some of the capabilities, and he would occasionally say, “Can you email your brother such and such?” His younger sister has a better grasp since her son got a computer and she sees him and his wife working on it.

I could talk about how the country has changed since my dad was born (1913), including the population explosion. But what this was all really leading up to is . . . the caboose. Isn’t that a wonderful word? Ca-boose. Say it. Savour it. Listen to its improbability as a word.

I grew up with cabooses. When at a railway crossing, you always tried to count the cars, and you always tried to be the first to spot the caboose. I think there were even some caboose games with rules, although I no longer remember what they are. I remember most cabooses I saw in New York and Pennsylvania being brick red or a green. Sometimes you could see a man or two hanging out the windows and wave to them.

The caboose is now long gone, having been replaced by safer (it is claimed, anyway) technology. The railroaders protested, the old-timers protested, but it was, like the demise of my black-and-white television, inevitable. It occurred to me one day that I wasn’t seeing as many cabooses and that more and more trains looked “naked” without an end in sight. This was going to be a battle that the railroaders wouldn’t win. I later read in the news it was the end of the line for the caboose.

I was thinking about cabooses the other day for some reason, and then I realised that this is the kind of thing that makes one feel “old” or at least out of place. People 15 years younger than I may never have seen a caboose, except perhaps mentioned in a book or at a museum. People my own age may remember them but not feel the emotional appeal that a memory from youth can have. And, as with my parents, people my age may be the first to wish to discard the old and embrace the new. I doubt there are any 10-year-olds now collecting train sets who insist on a caboose.

Savour that word. In my 40th year of life, it — and I — are anachronisms.