The Adventures of the Southwest Chief

I am wound tighter than a tick preparing for my Los Angeles to Chicago train trip abort the Amtrak southwest chief. I have not spent as much time preparing for the trip as other trips in the past. The night before I threw a few things together in the spare bedroom and now I am smashing clothes into my Rimowa black suitcase. A few more phone calls and emails and I should be ready to roll out the door when Sara gets home from school; Jeanne has volunteered Sara to take me to the Metro train station.

Sara slams into the house about 3:05 pm and asks if I am ready to go. “Yes”, I tell her, “we will leave in about 15 minutes so I can catch the metro train into union station”. Sara grabs a mac and cheese microwave cup, zaps it and plops herself down at the dinner table for a fast cram of a meal. “Now I am ready to go” I say to Sara after a few minutes. “ I want you to stay at the train station until the train comes just in case something happens and we need to drive to LA so I can catch the Amtrak train at union station”. “what? “ chokes Sara. “what can go wrong with a train?”. I respond “All kinds of things can go wrong, like it might breakdown or something, but I cannot miss the LA train to Chicago.”. “What, trains do not break down, I have places to go after I drop you at the train station” pouts Sara. “Right” I say in defeat.

Sara is the driver and flies down the street at a speed that has me digging my fingernails into the seat. “Slow down” I tell her. “Stop screaming at me.” she yells back. Now I know how my dad felt when I used to drive and he told me to slow down. “You are going too fast, someone might jump out from a car or something. You need to expect the unexpected” I tell her. Sara says “I know about the unexpected”. “how can you know the unexpected” I respond. I give it up and just close my eyes until we get to the train station.

We fly into the train station and I leave Sara in the car and tell her to wait until 4:10 pm for the train to arrive. I get out and start programming the ticket machine. I say programing because if you have ever worked one of these metro machines you push enough buttons that you get the feeling that you are programming the system. While I am punching my way through the system two guys stop and get out of a car leaving it running in the road. They both run to the machine and grab a schedule. “We can get on here or get on in Irvine” says one. “Yes, this all looks really good” says the other. I am thinking “Shopping around for the best train ride in the county?” I eventually get a ticket and then take off to platform number one. I look over my shoulder and the two guys are still there intensely staring at and working the schedule over with the car still idling in the road.

The train comes on schedule. I send a text to Sara and tell her “you can go now”. I find a table seat and do the thing where you lay you head on the table and look like a hobo. I take up 4 seats and hope nobody wants to join me. I am tired and I want to be left alone. Who wants to sit with a hobo sprawled all over the table?

We run about 5 minutes behind as we pass Fullerton but somehow catch up on time and hit Union station right on time at 5:30 pm. I know just where the line up will be for the Amtrak Southwest Chief because it must be right where the last lineup was for the Coastal Starlight. I push pass the crowds and get to the spot. Oh, great! Nobody here. This must not be the right place. So much for my perfect plan.

I run to the Amtrak information counter and ask the lady where the line is for the southwest sleeper. She says “Just sit down and there will be an announcement at 5:45 pm." I grab a quick bagel and then return. I see an Amtrak guy with a little mustache running around the floor with a bullhorn making some reference to the “southwest chief”. I chase after him. “Excuse me sir, where do I go for the southwest sleeper?” I say. “oh, just stand here and wait for a red cab” he says as he is pointing to a spot on the floor 3 feet away.

I stand on the specified spot and notice 4 Mennonites; two men and two women standing about 3 feet from me mostly dressed in black. A moment later a golf cart pulls up and the guy with the little mustache and bullhorn tells the driver “take them” pointing to the Mennonite troupe “and this guy”; pointing to me. We all load into the golf cart with me sitting in front with the driver and off we go down the hall doing the “beep beep” horn thing to about every person walking in the main corridor at union station. Here we are driving through union station in a golf cart; Mennonite guys in their Stuckies pizza hats with ZZ top beards and girls in their house on the prairie bonnets bouncing from wall to wall avoiding people walking to their trains by doing the zig zag. As people hear the golf cart horn they stop, turn and and stare that “what the heck?” stare as we speed on by to our train. I have visions of beards and bonnets streaming behind us in the wind.

The golf cart driver gets me to me train car and I am greeted by a short stout porter women with slicked backed dark hair and the traditional Amtrak blue uniform; she checks my ticket, makes a check mark on her clipboard and then turns quickly away. I then chase after the porter and ask to her back “Which way to my room?”. She turns around and abruptly says “left and up” pointing to the door on the car; then turns and heads off in yet another direction. I go into the car and find my room on the second floor. The room is across from the porter’s room and right next to the restroom and refreshment station.

It is 6:00 pm and the night has fully enveloped the station and train. I collapse into my seat in room number 2 but still feel anxious from the days events. The porter arrives on the floor and starts to bang and clang items at the refreshment stand. Soon I hear the porter talking to to someone in a frantic voice “The coffee pot is not working!”. “Try clicking this button and have you tried it somewhere else?” says the other person. “Yes, I have clicked the buttons back and forth but I do not hear the noise that happens when it starts” says the panicking porter. Soon another Blond haired woman Amtrak employee comes by and the porter tells her the same thing. More discussions and banging ensure regarding the coffee pot. Then, yet another Amtrak station employee arrives to provide technical support on the coffee pot crisis. More heated conversations about coffee pot buttons occur. The male employee says in a authoritative voice “look, you are leaving in two and a half minutes. Your coffee pot is fine I just tested it”; then more banging. Later on I check the refreshment station and the coffee pot has vanished.

Without notice the train slowly and quietly starts to creep down the track. There is nothing but silence. The cars were manufactured around 1970 and feel like behemoth battle ships departing home port as they glide through the train yards right outside the station. As we head Southbound back to Fullerton the porter continues banging and clanging things at the refreshment station. The crescendo of noise and the anxiety of the day is getting to me so I close my room door, get out of my pack the over the ear headphones, turn off the room lights, grab my two pillows for my head, and turn on my iPhone to Aaron Neville singing Cole Porters “In the Still of the Night” . As we slowly and smoothly pass the distribution facilities in the night, dark looming trees and eyes of commuters in the stopped cars watch our departure; my relaxation technique is now working; I start to feel a warm calm feeling slipping into my body; I enjoy the passing of a world outside that I know too well and will soon leave behind to the deserts of the Southwest.

We in the train are a long and sublime movie screen and the people that stop and stare at the train as it passes are the audience watching the movie. What a strange and wickedly splendid feeling I get as my train performance unfolds to the audience and then we depart as quickly as we arrive without so much as a bow or curtsy. How many people go home and tell their spouse that they saw a snapshot of a life which they will probably never see again, viewed for but only a moment as they sit in their gas guzzling movie seats?

Things are now going my way as I look out the window. I hear a noise and turn my head to look at my door and through the glass is someone's butt in jeans pressed up against my window. This is just too much. I think “Just stop it! Come on. Everybody needs to take a seat and relax.” I close the drapes on the door window and close my eyes to make it all stop.

After a bit it is time for dinner. I head to the dinning car where I am seated with two year old Nathan and his grandmother. Nathan is going to live with his grandmother for a month in Albuquerque while Nathan’s dad moves from San Diego to Bremmerton Washington. Nathans dad is in the Navy and will soon ship out for a 9 month stint aboard a Navy ship heading for the war. Grandma says that Nathan’s mother is not involved with Nathan anymore because her son divorced her. Nathan’s mother started sleeping around and using drugs. Grandma says “During the divorce court the Judge ordered a drug test on Nathan’s mother right there on the spot in the court room. When the judge came back after the test they found she had been doing meth and the Judge ordered a deputy to immediately pickup Nathan and bring him to his father at the court room. My son was granted full custody of Nathan.” Grandma then laughs and says “When I picked up Nathan in California my son started to tell me that Nathan has meal time at this time and then has nap time at that time.” Grandma rolls her eyes and says “I told my son that I have done this before, remember? It is not like I have never had a child”.

We pass through the city and on to the open spaces of the high desert while Dean Martin sings “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” in my headphones. Meanwhile inside the moving movie theater the porter is just a whirlwind of activity in the corridor. I catch glimpses of her as she runs back and forth down the hall doing who knows what. At 8:30 she sees me come out to go to the restroom and confronts me with “You want your bed turned down?”. Kind of early in the night even for me so I tell her “No, I think I will wait until 9:30 “. She thinks for a moment and appears to be annoyed at my response; she then states “I am going to bed at 10:00” and then backs off a bit and says “I guess 9:30 will be fine”. I can see the porter and I are not walking on the same planet. I later see her running around at 9:00; I think maybe now would be a good time and ask her to turn the bed down. She about knocks me out of the way as he heads to the bed to turn it down.

I dress for bed, lay down under two warm blankets and start to read my book. Soon I hear a knock on my door. I push aside the door curtains and there is the porter with her faced pushed up against the door window with her hands cupped on both sides of her face like she is peering at a city skyline from the top floor of the Empire State building. “What?” I mouth at her from inside the room. “You doing Okay?” she rapidly asks. “Yes, I am doing just fine. Thanks.” I tell her with a sigh. She departs and a couple of minutes later I hear banging and clanging coming from the refreshment station.