New York Musings
Comments: 0 - Date: October 29th, 2002 - Categories: Uncategorized
I do not fly anymore. A few months ago, I was searching Amtrak’s Web site, a nearly non-fuctional piece of poo, for fares to Colorado for Xmas, and came across a $16.50 fare to New York. Of course, we had to go.
We went this weekend. While the prospect of sitting 22+ hours (give or take anything) sitting slightly reclined on an Amtrak train may not be that exciting to you, I knew - KNEW - that I was going to see some cool shit. Who takes the train? Weirdos. Who’ll be there to both eavesdrop and record for y’all? Me.
At about 2 am, the coach car’s heat kicked on and drove a wine-flushed me into the smoke of the dining car. The scene? Various obviously drunk/weird people all clapping and singing while a beanie-clad mandolin player strummed a new train-oriented version of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” The race began!
I should explain the difference between weird, crazy, and drunk. Because of my family history, “drunk” generally means raucous noise fused with the tinkling of ice. However, the inebriated also slur, fail to focus, and gesture shakily. In my experience, I recognize the crazy instinctively, moving backwards steadily as though in the path of a pissed off rattler. The weird, though, can usually be fucked with slightly. They usually don’t even care if you write shit down about them. Weird people have a slightly grubby, rumpled look and have almost all heard of Art Bell.
The mandolin player made fast friends with this hippie-trash dude with long hair and his Indian cupcake. It wasn’t long before they launched into a plan of visiting Europe as mandolin-playing troubadours. Look out, Continent! Later, they would begin edging their way through “Hotel California, driving me from the car.
A very, very, very rotund lady borrowed the Indian girl’s celly. The first thing she said during this conversation was, “The bail is how much? $50,000?” A man turned to me and said, “Sounds like my family.” I half-heard this woman explain about her daughter’s domestic violence woes over the bizarre and drunken verbal diarrhea of a retired psychiatric nurse forcibly bending my ear. The guy was travelling with his aged mother back from seeing his daughter in Seattle. While I’d like to have asked him about his more grisly shock therapy experiences, I was distracted by his Parkinson’s shaking and repeated attempts to pick up both my poetry-writing table partner and me.
We tried to ignore the guy. She told me that earlier in the night, the racist cafe car attendant had banned her from smoking Black & Mild cigarettes, which smell of baking, even though a dude was puffing away on a stogie. The outrage! Personally, I’d have vomited if I’d been exposed to cigar smoke for more than 30 seconds, but the Black & Milds were quite bearable.
Crone is the perfect word to describe another cafe car inhabitant. Mussed topknot, ill-fitting and mismatched plaids, Mojave Desert complexion. Fascinating woman. Alternately, she dropped references to the Buena Vista Social Club, Roger & Me, and fucking Art Bell. She railed against Wal-Mart. A strange melange.
For most of the trip, an Amish family was seated directly ahead of Peedge and I. their black and blue clothes, like an orthodox bruise, stood out in the coach car. In the seat ahead of us sat two Amish boys in their late teens or early twenties. One was wearing discreet black Converse kicks. Whilst twittering on in pidgin German, they drank Coke out of plastic bottles. Further disillusioning me, during a smoke break in Pennsylvania, I spotted the two boys puffing away in full sight of their family. What’s this world coming to? I only hope that they were off in the city having some kicks before once again assuming the sober Amish mantle in Lancaster, PA.
Our return voyage was far less random. I didn’t even venture into the smoking car. All I wanted to do was read and I plowed through a pilfered copy of Memoirs of a Geisha (not half bad!), Bridget Jones’ Diary (bad), and a Hunter S. Thompson compilation of Phineas’. We took some time out to play Hangman in the cafe car, though. At the table next to us, two guys played some 21 with Amtrak souvenir playing cards. All of a sudden, this old guy from the coach car plunks down next to them and places a plastic bag and a cup on the table. He opens coffee-sized milk containers into a plastic cup. “Anyone want a glass of milk, compliments of Burger King? Vitamin D!” What? Then he does a weird version of Eenie, Meenie with the words “Surrender, USA.” He offers everybody in the car “milk, compliments of Burger King.” As soon as he gets up, the guys at the table, Phineas, and I head back to the coach car.
During our stop at the Altoona station, the old man in front of us tells us a joke about hearing aids and suppositories.
Ride the rails. See America.
Eating: On the train, I ate Wheat Thins, Pretzel Flips, raisins, Fig Newtons, and antacids.