Outlined at the Swissotel on Sunday, March 31

Written in Pittsburgh on Sunday, April 7

“I just watched a video on InTheseGoingsDown (icepick knife). I didn’t know you stayed at the Swissotel. I worked there for a few weeks. It was nice. But we would park on the lower level dock area and there was a large crack in the wall going into the loading area right by the kitchen and these huge rats would go back and forth between the building and the dumpster nonstop in the mornings. That probably happens at literally every place that serves food in Chicago. That’s why I always bring my own lunch. I don’t trust eating anywhere downtown. Not to mention cockroaches in the drop ceilings.”

-Electric Dan, an April 5th text

…

In Chicago we did see rats from the bus and trains.

The final leg to Chicago was sparse on the train, the two coaches only half full. Leaving California, Denver is the endpoint of travel for most folks. The Rockies and the Great Basin split the nation in many ways. Half of the folks that board in California are only going to Reno, Nevada. The eastbound Zephyr will always be half full headed to Salt Lake City. Then, many folks board at SLC, enough to fill half a car. The stops in Colorado at various resort towns drain the train, with Glenwood Springs a key destination.

Denver, whether one is traveling east or west, is where half the train empties. Rarely do as many folks board in Denver as offload. Some folks switch to air travel or rental car. I get the idea, that a certain number are relocating to what is certainly the nicest city I have ever been to. It was not until after midnight that the final busload of passengers, in which Chris the Conductor rode, to make certain we all made it, arrived at Denver Union Station. It was strange to be seated with the same folks in different order.

Throughout the trip Northeast across the Great Plains the engineer did what he could to make up time. Trains creep through the mountains, outpaced by vehicles except in heavy snow. But on the plains, the train can hit a governor speed of what I think is 82 MPH, though it may be 80 or 84. it has been three [79 MPH] years since this was described to me. However, freight trains sidelined and slowed us. If the freight train and passenger train—as light as paper by compare—pass each other at high speed going opposite ways the passenger train might blow over! There are also many bottle necks at stations, at the small hubs of the rail network, where trains coming and going must share the same track, taking turns. In America, freight ALWAYS takes priority over people: things over lives, the American Way.

Once daylight came, I shared breakfast with a young fellow named Hamilton in the dining car. He works in securing bonds and bid bonds for construction projects in Southern California. He was a very nice fellow, one of those men who could be 24 or 44. I asked him, “Are you attending college or teaching?”

He laughed, getting that comment often.

Seated in the dinning car, which she uses as her head quarters, is my favorite Amtrak conductor, I forget her name. She is a woman in late middle years for whom English is a second language. As a young broad, that must have been very sexy. These days, she sounds like a female Bond villain. She does not walk the cars casting her shadow of authority like the usually tall and athletic male conductors. She dispatches her underlings, the coach attendants and assistant and invites, by intercom, the passengers to visit her in the dinning car. If I write a Planetary Romance, this lady will be cast as the Queen of the World.

As the train fell further behind, in a race to make connecting trains in Chicago, where the entire net is hubed together, we were given updates. The crew dispensed free food from the cafe car, brought cases of water bottles to us in our seats and cases of prepackaged cracker and cookie and trail mix samples, kept on board for such eventualities. We would eat for free on Saturday on the train and Easter Sunday at Union Station Chicago. There, increasing numbers of aging, injured and crippled passengers, such as this hoary gimp, are accommodated in what used to be an exclusive business sleeper class boarding lounge. There, we are advised and attended by ticket agents and ferried to the trains by “Red Cap” baggage handlers, who stand on a kind of tow motor that pushes the passengers and baggage.

The old black fellow, who has the pigeon farm, where other critters are attended, was constantly on the phone with his irritating younger family members, who were all at each others’ throats since he had been gone to California from Carolina to lay his dear mother to rest. He loved the train, having taken the bus cross country westward. A chicken hawk had taken a pigeon, but his son had rescued the still living bird from the raptor’s nest, having scared off the carnivore. He traveled with a great bag of food and began dispensing what was left to the handful of children traveling with their parents, Saying, “I’m old—gotta lightin’ my load.” The boys were thrilled at the supply of Poptarts.

Zen Mountain had gotten off at Denver, an impressive physical specimen of about 35, with beard, who sat in the Lotus Pose for days. Ashcan Sam, when threatening white folk who were on his train, scooched along the stairway housing to avoid having to pass through Zen Mountain’s aura, fearing to look or speak in that serene direction.

A father traveling with wife and two sons, dad wearing a carpenter’s union’s hoody, he and wife about 30, and their boys about 11 and 12, made friends with Pigeon Farm, whose boys asked all manner of questions about farm animals, hounds and pigeons. The old fellow even went forward and got a box of free snacks to shower onto the boys.

Two old fellows in their 70s, Midwestern men with interesting family histories and a knowledge of the various state histories, held an interesting conversation with each other across the aisle to my left.

The people headed to Pittsburgh and points southeast of there, knew by this time that we were screwed as we sailed into Chicago.

Things were being sorted out, people headed to the northeast offloading onto waiting busses at Galesburg, Illinois. The sultry voice of the conductor, proclaimed, “Galesburg, if Galesburg is you stop—now is the time!”

I could not tell if this was an Eastern European or Southern South American accent. The remaining folks were really bonding, a couple even smiling and speaking to me who had offered no conversation. Then came Her announcement:

“Paul, Paul from Sacramento, who is going to Plano, Texas. Paul, please come forward to the dinning car. We care about, you, Paul… there is an unforeseen problem with your connection. Please, Paul… Paul from Sacramento, Paul in coach, come forward to the dinning car… WE, HAVE, A, PLAN, FOR, YOU!” Please, Paul, come to us—we have plans for You…”

The announcement sounded so sweetly sinister, that everybody, especially the Amish, started laughing and a few young guys up front started yelling, “No, Paul, don’t do it! Paul—don’t go!”

Thank You all, a week later, all I recall is the good times.