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January 4, 2009You myoclonic jerk!Sounds like a great insultAND MY SISTER, CRUELLA,and I have certainly used it against each other as such, but a myoclonic jerk is actually the name for the sensation, a muscular spasm we have all had, of being startled awake with a jolt, sometimes experienced as a sense of falling. Some say it’s a jump start from your brain to your muscles as they relax into sleep. It comes from the Greek klonos for turmoil. But it’s also how I think of the first delicious tug of the train away from the home station, the jolt that takes you out of your waking dream and sets you on a new path. DID YOU KNOWthat my alma mater, Temple University, played in the first Sugar Bowl, held in 1955, year of my birth? Nor did I. Also, 350,000 listeners tune in to TU’s WRTI each week. 140,000 Pennsylvanians, and at least one Californian, are Temple alumni. I know these facts because the No. 1 Fact is that Temple is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year, and that fact and many others are revealed on red posters at 30th St. Station, Philadelphia, where I’m boarding the NE Regional Train No. 195 to Washington, DC. Have to detour out of my way to catch the No. 29 Capitol Limited to Chicago. “IF YOU’RE NOT A GOOD WRITER,”says the gal behind me into her cell phone, “you’ll never be an L.T.” (whatever that is). Some sort of intern, I gather. She talking to a job-seeking friend, whom she tells, “If you want to be on the Hill,” she continues, “that’s a first.” Well I am a good writer, and I’ll never be an L.T., because I don’t want to be anything but a writer. So there. IN WILMINGTON, DELAWAREI stop to call my sister Cruella, who’d asked me to check in when I got on the train, to report I’m safely and soundly on it. I’m told she’s sleeping, but her partner, Xena, tells me, “I’m jealous.” “OF ME?”I instantly ask, as if no one possibly could be. But what I am is a free agent, unemployed, money in the bank, taking the long way home to California. That’s pretty much where she’d like to be in her life. The timing’s not right, Xena, but hang in there—one day it’ll be you, too. It took me 51 years, after all. I PINPOINTED MY PERSONAfor myself on the California Zephyr, somewhere in Colorado, when I did a cross-country jaunt after giving myself the present of quitting my job right before Christmas, 2006. I’M GOING TO SPEND MY LIFEwriting and traveling, and writing about traveling. The money will come from the writing, the writing will finance the traveling. The occasional evergreen provides a refreshing contrast to the barren dried sticks of an east coast winter. I HAVE IN MY BACKPACKan artifact, a relic of who I used to be—an undiagnosed unmedicated bipolar compulsively obsessed with my love for one man—my friend, now happily married for the second time, named James Lawrence Czarnicka (at least in my novel), who delivered at the station the book I forgot to pick up at his house at dinner the night before—a (love) journal I wrote for him in 1978, I discover, opening it for the first time in thirty years. “For James,” it is inscribed and then (get this!): “O sweetheart, hear you your lover’s tale.” BUZZER SOUNDS.First of all, I was not his lover in the flesh, only in thought and word. I’m almost scared to see what those words were, at how corny and immature I must have been, but here goes nothing… I…I’m FLABBERGASTED.I Underneath my hysteria I was a smart, well-read, perceptive, gifted twenty-three-year-old, and I could turn a fuckin’ phrase. Some corn (and porn) was inevitable in rambling about love, but there are also gems like “I fall in love with you every time I blink and open my eyes to you.” How about this: “Maybe I will love other men, but you have touched my heart. If they did surgery on me, they would see your print there, branded on the tissue.” 1:45 BALTIMORE PENN STATIONwhere Boston is this-a-way and Washington is that-a-way. We are not on a platform, but at a “location,” Location D I think it was. Locations A and B are upstairs. We enter the first longer-than-I-would-have-expected tunnel of my three train rides, between Baltimore and BWI, Thurgood Marshall Airport. New Carollton, Maryland, next stop, and then before I know it, scampering to get my act together, our destination, Washington, DC. For the purposes of this narrative, DC will be considered a state, not a district. That makes this State No. 4, two hours into the trip. I’m sitting in Daniel Burnham’s restored 1907 Union Station, in the Gate C area because there are no seats in Gate D. “Did you bring your work with you?” asks my neighbor Harry as I open my laptop. “I’M A WRITER.My work is never done.” “No children?” “Naw, that’s not for me.” “She’s not one of us, Jake,” says the 66-year-old father of eight to his six-year-old son. “She’s a single girl, travels around, free as a bird.” Jake’s got the energy his dad ran out of around a decade ago. I COULD WRITE A BOOKabout him, he tells me. He and a gang of his “wise guys” used to steal truckloads of meat, distribute the cuts to his neighbors on the block, and sell the rest. “Still in that line of work?” I ask, somewhat taken aback. As if, he says—he was a teen. They did it to survive. Then they’re off to New Haven. “Bye, Harry! Bye, Jake!” I was enjoying their company, but spend the remaining half hour of my layover chomping on a Pizzeria Uno spinach stromboli and “columnizing” my hand-written notes, as it were. I take note of an Amtrak promo, “Unwind Your Way Across America,” featuring posters of the California Zephyr (Chicago to San Francisco), the Southwest Chief (Chicago to Los Angeles), the Sunset Limited (Orlando to Los Angeles), the Empire Builder (Chicago to Seattle) and the Silver Star (New York to Miami). I realize I’ve been on every one of those trains, but it’s the Capitol Limited, Washington DC to Chicago, I am waiting for as I write this. The train is called and we all move out of the crowded, uncomfortable waiting room and pass through a more luxurious and comfortable padded-seat waiting room, completely empty. “DAMN!”says the fellow ahead of me, “look at all this unused space!” “I think this is the first class lounge,” I tell him—“but I happen to be first class, and I should have been lounging here!” BUT NOW I’M COMFORTABLY SETTLEDin Car 2901, Room(ette) 14. Within minutes I’m back in Maryland, as I had to go out of my way to to DC to catch this train. I’ll be crossing through West Virginia, back to Maryland, back to Pennsylvania, through Ohio and Indiana, on to Illinois and the Chicago hub. First stop is Rockville, Maryland, claim to fame, final resting place of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The town of Garrett Park, named for the president of B and O Railroad, made it into the Washington Post when the town was settled in 1890 and Grace Springs installed indoor plumbing and a toilet in her home. The townsfolk were reportedly outraged, considering these innovations to be “dangerous to the standards for health and decency,” according to the Route Guide. “The offending contraption was subsequently removed.” IF I REMEMBER RIGHTThe Pennsylvanian used to go direct to Chicago, through Altoona, PA with its hairpin turns, Johnstown, home of the flood, and Latrobe, home of Rolling Rock beer, but it now ends in Pittsburgh. I loved that train, but I guess the Capitol Ltd. Is the most direct indirect route to Chicago from Philly, and had I taken the other, I’d have missed sunset in West Virginia, houses and trees silhouetted against the indigo sky, a water tower sitting on the horizon like a daddy-long-legs spider. A STEELY SILVER RIVERSCAPEand park with lonely weathered gray picnic tables emerges from behind the stark sticks of trees. It is “Point of Rocks,” as a quick-disappearing sign reads, where the rail line from Washington meets the original B and O line from Baltimore. Moving on, the Appalachian Trail, at 2,050 miles the longest continuous footpath in the world, crosses the tracks. “BEAUTIFUL HARPER’S VALLEY,West Virginia,” is our next station stop. Charming it does indeed seem, with a General Store nearby the river and bridge. This is where you get off if you’re headed for Frederick, Maryland. (Get off in Martinsburg, West Virginia, if you’re going to Hagerstown, Maryland.) In Martinsburg is the oldest, at 150 years continuous operation, working train station in the U.S. and the only structure to escape destruction during the Civil War (now a National Historic Landmark). General Stonewall Jackson managed to highjack 14 train engines and several cars loaded with track and supplies. B and O was so impressed with this that after the war, they made Colonel Thomas Sharp, who led the raid, their master of transportation. HARPER’S VALLEYwas also the site of abolitionist John Brown’s attempt to seize the arsenal, aborted by Col. Robert E. Lee’s ordering special trains to thwart the group and force surrender. John Brown, of course, was hanged. Now we cross the Potomic River into the Harper’s Valley Tunnel on the Maryland side of the tracks. We’ll be passing through Hancock WV, MD and PA, a hamlet with the distinction of being in three states at once. The south bank of the Potomic is in West Virginia, the north bank in Maryland. This is the narrowest point in Maryland’s “neck,” and the northern edge is over the Pennsylvania state line. Another fun Amtrak factoid is that we enter and exit the 1,592-foot long Graham Tunnel in West Virginia, but as we pass through the tunnel we’re in Maryland. I SPOT A COUPLE OF BOXCARSlabeled “BNSF” and “Ferremex,” neither of which I’ve heard of, followed by Union Pacific cars reading “Building America.” Hey I think it’s pretty much built now, let’s hold off on some of that building and use what we already have. We’re switching engineers in Cumberland, MD, where a banner announces that the Overstock Room is Now Open, and we pass, along what I think is 1st St., Long and Foster Realtors, Commercial Press, Holiday Inn, M and T Bank, McDonald’s, Value City Department Store, More for Less, Family Dollar, and a Subway, and that seems to be Main Street, America. Three churches within blocks of each other come and go, in what may be “Olde” Cumberland, and a Citgo gas station. “LOOKING FOR THE SAVINGS LANE?”asks an insurance company billboard. A spurt of lingering Christmas lights wink at the train. Electrically lit deer and horses graze on lawns. There’s an illuminated plastic Santa Claus at someone’s window, and I try to imagine that person’s life, but stop short. I don’t want to. Cumberland was once known as the “Queen City of the Alleghenies.” Once. NOW WE COMEGap to the Cumberland, literally a gap in the mountains providing east-west passage. Legend has it that an Indian princess who’d fallen in love with a federal soldier but was forbidden to marry by her father, leapt with the soldier from a 1000-foot cliff at the east end of the Gap, now called “Lover’s Leap.” Her distraught father also leapt off. THE MARYLAND/PENNSYLVANIA STATE LINE,also known as the Mason/Dixon line, was originally surveyed in the 1760’s by a couple of English astronomers, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, to determine which state owned what land. It was not until the Civil War that the line became associated with separating the free states from the slave states. RELAXING NOWin my made-up bed after dinner with Katie and Sawyer and my next-door neighbor “Mr. Shin,” who speaks no English—trout with stone-cold vegetables and rice pilaf. Now Katie and Sawyer have been seeing each other for five years—both in college and can’t afford to marry right now, which reality Sawyer (whose twin brother’s name is Sebastian) took pains to emphasize before their vacation to New York to do New Year’s Eve on Times Square. He’d given her a snowboard for Christmas and she wasn’t expecting anything else, but they kissed when the ball dropped and when she opened her eyes she was looking at her diamond engagement ring. I love that story. AFTERI fill out my sleeping car “bill,” the waitress asks for my pen back. “Sorry! I’m writer and I’m used to having a pen in my hand.” Mr. Shin is confused when the waitress appears with his bill. He has to pay only for the Bud Light, and I point to the can and hold up five fingers. He hands her a five-dollar bill and she says “thank you” in Korean! She knows “thank you” in about twenty languages. I point to the desserts on the menu and Mr. Shin declines, but he simply cannot understand the waitress or Katie telling him that his meal is included with his room, and he can go back to the sleeper car if he wants. I point to the bill and make a summary “you’re out” motion with my hands. He finally gets it. But he points to the $3 I left under my pie plate and asks, “Tip?” I nod. THEN I PRECEDE HIMinto the sleeper, but overshoot the stairs and continue down the long hallway. He calls out “Alexandra!” motioning me to come back and leads me back to car 2901 and points at the stairs. When Arthur, our attendant, comes by to make up our beds, Mr. Shin stands in the doorway having no idea what he’s being asked. I point to my already made-up bed and he grins, stepping into the hall. Mr. Shin is so cute! It’s about 10:30 as we say goodnight. WHAT TOWN IS THIS,I wonder, passing through it industrial zone, having lost track of the schedule while in the dining car. A hillside of lights is reflected in a river. The nearly half-moon shifts right, left, right, left, disappears and reappears as the track curves. We’re still in eastern standard time, so we must be between Connellsville and Pittsburgh. We’ll hit P-town within the hour, and take off from there into Ohio around midnight. Lights across the water flash on and off between the cars as a train passes close to ours. A skyline with one tall building and a lighted dome approaches, but we’re not stopping there. The small bank of clouds the moon passes behind turn out to be smokestack pollution. We pass through a freakin’ spooky tunnel, its brick whitewashed walls, arched ceiling and repeated ominous black arched doorway-like shapes lighted only by the train and visible only behind the curtain. Phew, I am glad we’re out of there. I EAT AN ORANGEI bought in DC, just as the moon, much lower on the horizon and seemingly twice as big, has turned orange. WE APPROACH PITTSBURGH.I’d been here once while driving cross country with an architect, to see a prison designed by Henry Hobson Richardson (used in the movie “Mrs. Soffel”), but have long wanted to explore this town, which has been called a city of “firsts,” including the first polio vaccine, the nation’s first commercial nuclear power plant, and the first all-aluminum skyscraper. The University of Pittsburgh’s football team was first to put numbers on their jerseys, and the Steelers were the first team to win four Super Bowl trophies. There are patches of snow on the ground in Alliance, Ohio, at 1:33 a.m., and it’s sleep for me. My eyes open again as we pass Cleveland. I always thought the Huey Lewis song “Heart of Rock and Roll” claimed that “the heart of rock and roll”…is in Cleveland. The line is “the heart of rock and roll is still beating.” But now the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum is in Cleveland, so I wasn’t that far off. And one mythic figure was born here in Cleveland—Superman—from creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. AS I SLEEPwe pass through Milan, Ohio the birthplace of Thomas Edison, who though he owned more patents than any other inventor, had only three months of formal schooling. I guess everything he needed to know he learned in kindergarten. We cross the Vermillion and Huron Rivers heading into Sandusky, a station for the famous Underground Railroad, which helped slaves escape to freedom before the Civil War. We also cross Portage River at Port Clinton, “the Walleye Capital of the World.” Then comes the “Glass Capital of the World,” home of Owen’s Corning, Toledo. There are a lot of Capitals of the World in these here United States. ELKHART, INDIANAlays claim to “Brass Musical Instruments” (it inspired “The Music Man”) and “Mobile Home Capital of the World.” Alka-Seltzer was also born here. Bryan, Ohio (“The Fountain City,” for its artesian wells) boasts the world’s largest manufacturer of candy canes and Dum Dums. Also the birthplace of the Etch-a-Sketch, from the Ohio Art Co. In the little town of La Porte began the Age of Flight in the 1890’s, when a engineer dude named Octave Chanute used high dunes as jump-off points for manned glider excursions. His designs influenced aviation projects world-wide, including the Wright Brothers’ motorized aircraft, which came along in 1903. SUNDAY JANUARY 3, 2009Oh dear, the sear, drear fields of Indiana blanketed with fog at dawn! After breakfast with Diane the retired nurse and showering and dressing in the changing room, there’s not much time left before Chicago. We had our time change in South Bend and gained an hour, but I am ready for three days and two nights of continuous train travel, beginning at 2 p.m. today on the Zephyr, arriving at SF at 6:25 p.m. Tuesday. Aaaaah! Well, we have passed the Chicago Skyway Toll Bridge. Your trip begins at Michigan.org, I spot on a billboard. No, actually, it pauses in Chicago, resumes in Chicago, ends in SF. Here’s the highway exit for State Street, that great street. White Sox stadium coming up, then Chinatown, then the station. The Panera Bread Co. truck proclaims: Unsliced bread. The best thing since sliced bread. Clever. I’ve got less than an hour before I hit the WIFI-enabled first-class waiting room to post this baby. I’m up to seven states. I hope you enjoyed my trip half as much as I, or perhaps exactly as much, or even twice as much…or all points in between.
Obama at Union Station, Washington, DC ------------------------------------------------------------ Whoo-whoo! Whoo-whoo!
Next stop--The Twilight Zone copyright Alexandra Jones 2009 |
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