January 7, 2010
Where r u now?
my sister keeps texting me.
SOMEWHERE IN AMERICA
Between New York and Philadelphia. Between Philadelphia and DC. Between DC and Pittsburgh. Between Sandusky, Ohio and Elkhart, Indiana. Between Chicago and Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. Between Osceola and Omaha, Nebraska. Between Fort Morgan, Colorado and Green River, Utah. It’s hard to believe there’s a continuous system of tracks leading from Chicago all the way to California, but I’m a-ridin’ those rails right now and they’re taking me home.
Philadelphia 30th Street Station
As I write, I’m between Helper and Provo, headed for Salt Lake City. But in my mind, I’m between Brooklyn and San Francisco, as to the somewhere in America I want to live.
GOT OFF TO A ROCKY START
in the Rockies this morning, rockin’ and rollin, with fog obscuring the deep vistas. This is my third day and third night on one train or another, the Northeast Regional, the Capitol Limited, the California Zephyr.
IT ALL STARTED
Christmas Eve at Penn Station, New York and ended at Fox Chase Station, Philadelphia: that dreaded time of year known as the holidays at home with my family. “I hope this is the last ticket to 30th Street Station I ever buy!” I exclaim to my sister, though it is unlikely that I will never again flee Fox Chase on the SEPTA R8 commuter train to freedom.
Generally, in my case back east, one train leads to another and Fox Chase led to Philly led to Washington. “An informed pet is our best client,” says a sign in Rockville, Maryland, whatever that means. Potomac Valley Brick employs a scad of people here in this DC suburb. At 4:35 p.m. their parking lot is still full, and I speed past them on my way to Chicago. How dreary is the working life! What about all these people’s lives, driving hither and thither on the freeways and at the stoplights, how are their days and nights? Whither goest thou, America? Indeed.
Creeks and ponds are all frozen out here, the land and vegetation in winter hibernation. There’s the beautiful little station at Point of Rocks that the B and O architect Francis E. Baldwin designed. This is my third January in a row on this route and the markers are familiar and welcome as neighborhood landmarks.
TUNNEL!
Emerging onto frozen cliff-face, sheaths of ice hanging from ledges of rock. Someone just got a wrong number on his cell phone, the sing-songy ringtone sounding so out of place on a train. No more no-one-can-reach-me, no-one-can-touch-me about being “lost in America,” as I think of cross-country train travel, or anywhere, anymore. With GPS tracking, for instance, my mother can now follow a flight’s itinerary on the web and pinpoint my minute of landing. “Don’t bother to call me on the train!” I tell Ma, “I’m not taking calls!”
NIGHT TAKES HOLD
as we pull out of Harper’s Valley, West Virginia, home to the Harper’s Valley hypocrites. Thomas Jefferson called where the Potomac and the Shenandoah Rivers meet “perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature!” That was not apparent from my window on this train, but perhaps I could see it, like the man on the balcony, from the lovely inn on the hill, its welcoming yellow lights dotting the darkness and beckoning to me. But the train, as is its wont, moves on, and I with it.
In a swath of darkness, a single house with a Christmas display looks like it could be the real nativity scene, lit with a divine glow from the baby Jesus. A huge moon is hiding behind trees—as we move closer, I see that it reads “Burger King.” We’ve been slowly moving along through nowhere fields, stopping to accommodate freight trains, and are now inching towards civilization, if not slouching toward Bethlehem. There, anyway, are the Golden Arches. Awaken the Thrill, says the banner, “with the Big Mac AVATAR meal.” Yeah, I had lost all zest for life ‘til I had that $2 movie tie-in burger.
WHERE THE FREAK ARE WE?
At American Legion Post 13. At the Union Rescue Mission—“Doorway to Hope at the Gateway to the West.” Cumberland, Maryland, gateway to the west? Isn’t that the St. Louis arch? I wonder what lives might be under repair or reconstruction at the Mission. They might also find solace at the Progressive insurance office down the street, whose wall reads, “Here’s hope—Jesus cares for you.”
TAXES STINK!
a billboard complains. “Your tax preparer shouldn’t.” Nearly two hours late due to freight delays and I hope we keep to it because our Chicago arrival time of 8:45 is a little early for me to be packed and ready to go.
A scary ghostly snowman emerges out of the darkness.
I’ve resolved to make a tradition of taking the train home from the familial duty call back east. Four days of decompression and I reacquaint myself with my country. Stay in touch, America! Chugging through anonymous small towns, most houses dark by 10:00 p.m., I like being somewhere in America, somewhere in Pennsylvania, I think. We pass “Wilderness Voyagers” and I wonder what they have to offer. Look it up on the web. On second thought, fuck the web. It’s delightful to be without it. Like turning off a noisy TV in the background when you’re on the phone. Ya can’t think.
YIKES!
Almost fell out of bed on that last lurch. I understand the top bunk has a safety belt. Hm, I’ve never been strapped to a bed before. Intriguing…
We have achieved Connellsville, PA, a beautiful little berg. Gorgeous, generous old houses in Christmas garb. Someone’s got a red stuffed chair out on their frozen lawn, next to a lit Christmas tree. Someone else watches TV in their mellow yellow living room, a golden square of lamplight falling onto the snow below the window.
It’s snowing now, streetlamps reveal.
Cryo-Trans is out there “protecting today’s perishables for tomorrow.” I wish I were one of them. I don’t think cryo-anything is going to protect my perishability.
WELL, I GOT MY WISH.
8:45 Central Time and we should have been arriving in Chicago ‘bout now; instead I am stretching and yawning as I awaken to a snowy Tuesday morning in Waterloo, Indiana, and I get another hour on the train instead of in the waiting room.
“I’D RATHER BE ON A TRAIN
than in a train station waiting for one,” I tell my DC-based attendant Cliff, who is going back there tonight. He just wants off the train, period.
Here comes Chicago
And I am off the train and in Union Station Chicago, where, as usual, their WIFI in the Metropolitan Lounge is freakin’ forkin’ down, so no live-posting this column. If Virgin can provide it 33,000 feet in the air, and Sweden on its trains, why can’t Amtrak maintain an internet connection in a goddamn waiting room? I pack up and pay Corner Bakery $4.00 for coffee and rugelach only to find out their WIFI, too, is down. Ah, fuck the web. But I can’t check to see what’s at the Art Institute or if it’s open Tuesdays (NY MOMA is not, I discovered) and it’s freezing and flurrying out there. I am not braving that Adams Street wind off the river without a clear objective.
I see on the board that the Empire Builder to both Portland and Seattle has been cancelled. Wow, lucky me. I almost booked that train, but decided three weeks of travel was enough and I didn’t want to make two more stops on the way home. “Doc” Livingston, our Santa Claus of a conductor for the Zephyr, says it won’t be back on track for two or three days. Phew, glad I missed that one. Instead I’ve got Roomette 2, Car 531 and dinner in the diner awaiting me, Illinois out the window.
Doc Livingston, Conductor, California Zehyr
TEXAS EAGLE
now boarding. So glad I’m not going to Texas! Haven’t been on that train yet, but I am not so keen on riding trains for trains’ sake as I used to be. On my years-ago sojourn on the Sunset Limited, what I mostly remember about Texas is “greener than I thought it would be,” and “are we still in Texas?”
I’d say 90% of the people in this sleeper’s lounge are retirees. I’ve always felt like the young one among old people, but it was clear at my writing workshop in Oaxaca that I am the old one among young people. There was a young-gals-loose-in Mexico clique and the older gals set, me among them.
2:11 ON THE ZEPHYR.
NOW I can relax; I don’t have to schlep baggage again until Thursday night back in SF. Luxury of all luxuries, tomorrow is the greatest of all great days because tomorrow belongs to the train. I wake up on the Zephyr, go to sleep on the Zephyr. This is the heart of the trip, the Colorado Rockies on into Utah.
The Village of Brookfield has whales on their water tower because Illinois is known for its thriving whaling industry. Flying down the Chicago suburban commuter line, whisking past Whitney Springs, Highland, Clarendon Hills—how would one choose amongst them to live? Like the Philly Swarthmore line, neat little towns all in a row, with their quaint main street of little shops in their Christmas finery. Cars are lined up at the Burlington Ave. train station, waiting to be driven to their garages and snowy driveways.
Downer’s Grove—there’s a cheery name for a town. You can go bowling at the Tivoli lanes, knock down a few pins and make some noise. Does someone find it a downer not having made it out of Downer’s Grove? Or Boring, Oregon? But some people like to keep their worlds small, familiar, on a first-name basis. I wish I were one of them, so I didn’t have to pay for the privilege of SF or NY—just hightail it out of there like friend Jerry and buy a nice roomy house somewheres quiet. But if I’m more than a bus ride away from a Big Ten orchestra, I won’t live there.
HOW LONG WOULD IT TAKE ME
to lose my mind here, do you think? I asked friend John of his town of Delsbo, Sweden. I think he guessed less than a week. There’s something to be said for having a forest in back of your house where you run your dogs and pick chanterelles for that night’s dinner. And I saw someone on his street, Kalv Stigen, pulling a flatbed of logs by horse. How many ways there are to live! No one should ever feel stuck in one of them. Every time I do, I find a way to pry myself loose, even if it takes a while, perhaps years.
A sign boasts that someone is a “leader in the Sandwich community.” Damn, you can make a community out of anything, even love of hoagies. How cold must that guy’s hands be, taking his galvanized trash cans out to the curb with no gloves. Down the street, someone burns cardboard in an oil drum. Odd to see fire amidst snow.
Catch someone’s eye at a railroad crossing. I lean against the window, pen in hand, as he waits for the train to pass. I feel privileged to be the one on the train. Being here means I am free. Of employment, home ownership, emotional entanglements. My chief responsibility is the welfare of three cats. (This is how you know I’m not a “cat lady.” They don’t stop me from traveling.)
JUST GOT FOOLED
by a fake deer on someone’s lawn, just like John Turturo in “Box of Moonlight.” Oh looky here, the holidays are over and the planes are back at work spreading chemtrails. A herd of black bulls look like velvet against the snow, which stretches as far as this eye can see, dotted here and there with ranch homes, barns and silos, each with its own stand of trees. None too close to any other. And the feed store is right handy.
Princeton, Illinois used to be called “City of Elms” until a blight killed them all off. Sad. “Princeton” was supposedly picked out of a hat. And now coming upon Kewanee, Hog Capital of the World. I wonder how wild things can get at the Labor Day Hog Days Festival? What with the parade, flea market and carnival. Knifings? Drunken scenes like with Roz Russell and William Holden in “Picnic”? I imagine a life in which someone might be a carny at the Kewanee Hog Days event, perhaps touring around to state fairs and such. I see the VFW is having a chicken fry on the 9th. I’m going to put that on my calendar so I can think of them and wonder how it went, wonder how all the stories across America are unfolding. I’m sure the VFW and its constituents are a big part of someone’s life.
“Hey, Homer! See you at the fry?”
“Wouldn’t miss it, Jeb.”
THE KARMA GODS WILL SMILE UPON YOU
if you return the sunglasses you stole to their rightful owner, comes the announcement. In this little rolling village, close quarters, open doors and rooms empty of people but full of their stuff, require trusting a lot of strangers on a train. I’ve encountered only one unsociable sort, a fellow next to me at dinner who didn’t say a single word to the three of us at his table over the course of an hour. I remarked upon it after he left. “Oh, I assumed he was your husband,” said NASA instructor Victor. “No,” I told him, “I travel alone.” “It’s better that way sometimes, isn’t it,” said he (divorced). “It’s better for me that way all the time.”
I love the look of a snow-covered cemetery. The sun has dropped to the horizon and the white field is orange, headstones glowing in the soft light. There’s a shop named “Odd Couple’s Printers.” I wonder what constitutes an odd couple here in Galva, Illinois? The usual? They suck dick?
PLEASE DON’T LEAVE THE PLATFORM
if you go out for a smoke stop in Galesburg, Illinois. “We don’t want to leave anyone behind.” “But we will,” someone says just as I am thinking it. “If you miss this train, we’ll pick you up tomorrow.”
I closed my eyes for a bit and when I looked up we were crossing the Mississippi into Iowa. Had I known that Steve’s Place (The Place to BE!) was here, I might have gotten off at Burlington. I guess I’ll have dinner tonight. Was too worn out yesterday to tell my story to a bunch of strangers. I’m coming from visiting family in Philly, heading home to San Francisco. That’s my story. The whole truth and nothing but it.
WHERE R U NOW?
my sister texts. Between Granby and Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Slept through Denver, whence I had promised to mail postcards. Sleep on a train is always by fits and starts, although you don’t miss much passing through Nebraska at night. The few times I looked up I thought, “talk about flat.”
I woke up looking like I’d been raped by Hypnos.
Stepped out for some fresh, cold unrecirculated, undisenfected Colorado air, and to mail the cards in Grand Junction; now Utah bound. Rocked out in the Rockies. Literally, I’m rocked out, my eyes have tired of those craggy brown rockfaces.
“Winter Gets Serious in USA,” says today’s USA Today front page. It’s amazing how much of this country is at the mercy of winter, how paralyzing are its effects. How much harder it is to accomplish things while in its grip, even just walking. The infrastructure, staff and equipment required of New York to manage snow is intense, just keeping streets clear. Out here? Criminy, snow rules. Rents are high in SF, but at least I’m not filling a fuel tank with heating oil every few months like I did in Portland. I didn’t even use my heat, five years on Page St.
I LOVE TRAINING
through Utah. So much raw earth on display. Geology 101 on wheels. I love this magnificent country of mine, I’m talking about the land mass and variety of topography, not some nationalistic zeal. I love the Zephyr route. “Named for the Greek God of the West Wind,” says a postcard, “the Zephyr blows you away with unique views of the American West.” I was proud, chatting with German exchange students over lunch, of the awesome scenery.
Pete has come to turn my bed down and I dart into the bathroom. I’d been feeling a bit of motion sickness from looking at the monitor, which appears to sway in a zig-zag effect when you look away from the moving scenery, and when I get a whiff of the standard issue Amtrak disinfectant, I throw up on the spot, in the football-sized sink. Pete is sorry to hear that; he tells me it’s air freshener coming through the vents. Ugh! Air freshener? Air sickener! I have always loved their almond-scented hand soap, however. Excellent shower this morning moving through Colorado. Plenty of hot water, decent water pressure, clean, rough towels. On a four-day trip, the first class shower alone is worth the price of admission.
A LITTLE GIRL’S SILHOUETTE
fills a window frame as the silver snake of the Zephyr Superliner passes her house. There’s got to be a mystique about a long-distance train that goes by your house every day. Born in Utah, what might she know of Chicago or San Francisco? Does she dream of the day she, too, will ride this train?
Salt Lake City. There’s some police action in an alley across the way, blue and red blinking lights, two cops talking to some poor schnook standing in snow. The cops go into the car, the schnook stays standing on the sidewalk for a good five minutes. What the hell? When I look up again, he is gone, but I didn’t see him get into the car. Someone’s Salt Lake City story. Glad it’s not mine.
THE HAPPIEST HAPPINESS OF ALL
is lying on my back on a train chugging through the dark, as, par for the course, my guardian angel Orion peers in my window. Good to see you, old chum.
For the past two years, my favorite stop on the route to get off and start a new life was Provo, Utah. This year the surprise winner is Connellsville, PA.
Hey, there’s a strip of casinos out here, in the middle of Mormon land. Or are we in Nevada already? The states come, the states go, I pass them all by. But everyone whose life I imagined from my snug seat is right where they were, no doubt; the Fox Chase ticket agent, the clients of the Cumberland Rescue Mission, the printing odd couple, the suburban commuters of Chicago, the Sandwich community, the gal at the Grand Junction gift shop, the Utah girl watching the train pass, Steve of Steve’s Place, the Kewanee carny, the VFW fry chef. What is it that anchors one to a life? Because I don’t seem to have one of those, an anchor. Is that a bad thing? All I have is my desire to be in the city of my choice.
THE UGLINESS OF RENO
seems somehow sadly gay…the glory that was Rome, is of another day. I’ve been terribly alone, and forgotten in Manhattan…I’m going home, to my city by the bay…
Last day of my marvelous 2010 excursion. I like starting the year out on the road. But boy do I feel a flop coming on. I am ready to hit that couch with those cats. Feeling a bit flu-ish (funny, I don’t look flu-ish). January 1st I joined the ranks of unemployed uninsured Americans; my COBRA coverage ran out and with it my prescription coverage, $20 doctor visits and psychopharmacological oversight of Dr. S. Because of my preexisting condition, I am out of luck with Big Pharma, since health care insurance companies are not in the business of caring for health, or for anything but the bottom line. Luckily, I live in San Francisco, which has a Health Access Plan for schnooks like me (just wanted to use the word “schnook” again).
BACK IN CALIFORNIA
and breathing a sigh of relief. Winter is for the birds, and the smart ones fly south. The Sierras feel like my backyard. By the time we near Colfax, the snow is gone and all is green again, the windows are warm to the touch, this trip has been long enough, and so has this column. As I get off the AMTRAK shuttle from Emeryville at the Ferry Building, I say to Lars, the German student, “Welcome to the best city in America.”
WHERE AM I NOW?
Home.
Home is where the cats are
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Short Attention Span Poetry Corner
Home is where the BART is
Where the living breathing heart is
Where your soul relaxes
When you walk in the door
Where you have what you want
And don't need anything more
If you start to wonder
Is this where I should be
Go sample other lives
And it's easy to see
Yours is fine as it is
Stop your griping and live
To yourself say shalom
And welcome yourself home
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San Francisco, 50 degrees and balmy. Brooklyn, 31 and snow expected. No.
1/7/10
goofcitygoof@yahoo.com
copyright Alexandra Jones 2010
