Storymania - Conversations With Glenn: A Good Day Up Here by Shelley J Alongi

Conversations With Glenn: A Good Day Up Here
Shelley J Alongi

Tonight, we never even discuss the railroad grip. But we do discuss the fatality on train 205. Now, we say goodbye. We have successfully ended another quiet conversation. The engineer has solaced me, and maybe I’ve made him smile. He cared enough to call. My text message must have reminded him to call me or this was the time he had. I’ll take it. It’s time with my sweet, lucky engineer. He really is the engineer of my dreams. And he has had another good day up here and because he has, then I have, too.

“I can understand a three whistle Amtrak, but Metrolink?” Glenn the number 1 engineer for Metrolink’s voice rises in surprise on the pronunciation of Metrolink.

“They don’t know the difference,” I say to the veteran engineer, the right one, the engineer of my dreams, “they just think it’s going to take them out of their misery.”
Glenn gives his customary sigh mumbled response, it’s a Glenn sound that can’t be readily translated. But it might go something like “yeah I don’t know about that.” It’s one of the things that intrigues me about him; these expressive vocal sighs.

It’s 10:05 pm on Wednesday June 29. I sit in my green recliner in the living room, my hand holding the phone connecting me to the man I’ve wanted to talk to desperately for two weeks. I’m so surprised that he’s called that I forget to be nervous. The cases of nerves comes on Friday and Sunday last when I leave two separate messages, one very emotional asking if he was on train 205 on June 14 as it left the Palmdale station on its last leg to Lancaster.

“Could you have really missed to fatalities in a row? I could call and ask you a lot of things," I say, knowing I'm going to cry, "but all I really want to know, honestly, is if you were on that train! Call me back, please?" Glenn is the only man I’ve ever met who’s ever had me on my knees, begging. I give place to no one, except if he’s the engineer of my dreams.

Are we here again? I wonder. Didn’t we just have this conversation five months ago? Then it was easy, he answered right away. Now I’ve had to wait. What does that mean exactly? It’s a question I’ve had since that day and now I sit here knowing I’ll get the answer, if not right away.

"May I call you today? I thought of something fun to ask you," I text on Sunday. "Working on transcripts. Need a break later." I work on the transcripts all day, of course I have to get all my work done before I call him. At 5:05 according to my phone log I pick up my black Samsung Haven and dial his number. It rings. He's not answering the phone. Why? Is he busy? Angry? Ignoring me? Angry, maybe. Busy, more than likely. Ignoring me? I doubt it. Glenn is the kind of man who talks to me when he has time. I appreciate that about him. He'll let me know if he has time or not or if we're on the phone he'll let me know when he has to go. Maybe this is because I'm always reluctant to let him go. Well, in any case, he doesn't answer on Sunday. "I wanted to ask you about the runs you made with Amtrak. I know you said you ran 4 and you also said the Starlight. Just have a good week," I instruct my favorite engineer. I'm still upset. I for some reason can't stand the thought that he might have racked up fatality number 8. "I don’t need any more of them," he says in January when I call him after the fatality on train 221. "If it's a suicide I just get pissed off!" So maybe this time he's just mad? Lilian says maybe he just doesn't want to talk. There is a lot of analyzing I could do, I'm sure in a few years I'll look at this and say wow all that for that? Yeah, all that for that. maybe that's half the fun, anyway. But this year all my engineers have racked up fatalities. I don't want him to be on that list.

By Tuesday June 29 I've partially regained my emotional equilibrium. Patience, little star struck middle-aged adolescent railfan. It's all going to be okay. He'll tell you if he was on the train that killed a man at Sierra and East Avenue that fateful Tuesday. He's just busy, or angry about it, if it was on his watch, really. He's not ignoring me. He likes people paying attention to him, just not too much.

But the call doesn't start that way tonight. The first question out of my mouth isn't whether he was on that train or not. In fact I'm not even expecting the call. It all starts when I text him at 10:00 because I've been online looking at the railroad bag that I'm going to buy in a week. Finally, all my over time and all my waiting are paying off. I'm going to buy it. I've decided next week is my week. I'm plunking down the most I've ever spent for a piece of luggage; this is special luggage according to the company. This is the last railroad grip you’ll ever need proclaims the web site. It's all American made, no cheap plastic zippers, and I can even monogram it. I just paid over a hundred for a wheel bag that I use for shopping, this one doesn't have wheels, it's a duffel bag on steroids, it's a cool thing, really and engineers online at least, like it. I’ve bought enough bags in my day to know if I’ll like it or not. I’ve never had one quite like it. I've been wanting it for six months and so I'm going to get it.

I pick up my phone and decide to text Glenn.

"Buying my rr grip in 1 week. Happy bday to me. 4:00 comes early. Good night. Sweet train dreams."

My text messages are sometimes short and sweet and sometimes I incorporate phrases into them that I use in my rr journal writings. But he doesn't know I incorporate these phrases into my writings. Never mind, I've texted him, I'm not going to worry if he responds or not.

I don't even remember where my phone was. Maybe I was holding it? Oh it must have been on the kitchen table maybe I went into the kitchen and did something, got water, I don't know. Maybe I went into my bedroom, picked up my bag, and my phone was ringing. I look at the time. It's 10:05. "Call from Glenn my favorite engineer" my phone says. I'm a little nervous. He's going to yell at me.

I pick up my phone.

"Hey Glenn. Am I in trouble?"

I say the strangest things when he's on the other end of the line. Maybe I've always been that way and just am only noticing it now? The last time I talked to him I said “It doesn’t look like the trains are in distress,” not knowing the next in distress would be his train.

But tonight, I’m not really thinking about the latest fatality. If it’s true that a watched pot never boils, then tonight I haven’t watched the pot and I’m about to get my answer. But first I want my favorite engineer to know that I'm getting my bag. I'm like a kid in a railroad candy store, I suppose. I want him to like it. He's just my first railroad engineer. I picked a keeper. And the conversation is a keeper.

"Nah. How old are you gonna be? 28?"

Glenn's first words, just like the time he announced from his cab window "She likes trains!" are always the best. Usually it's "yeah" or "whats up!" Not today! His first words dismiss my worries, starting the healing process, and he’s just answered a question for me. He does get my text messages. He reads them. Cool! I don't remember my response I am so happy he finally called! and it's quiet and I can mostly hear him. I'm just excited after two weeks of worrying about someone else's husband, child, brother, a man who climbs up and down locomotive ladders and calls out signals. He sounds good, energetic, teasing, quiet, definitely not annoyed.

"28?" I'm laughing. "No. Hardly! 45."

“Where are you gonna go?” my number one engineer questions Cheerfully. “New Mexico?”

New Mexico? Why would I go there? I’ll have to ask him about that one.

“Flagstaff!” I remind him of our personal joke, or is it mine?

“yeah,” he purrs, giving me his amused sigh. Sometimes I wish I could see that bearded face, the reason he won’t work for Disney when he retires, he says once, unlike his other engineer friend who plies his own kind of magic on that 3.8 mile railroad. He doesn’t want to lose that beard. I bet those brown eyes behind glasses are expressive. He’s just fun! Remember when it was raining so hard in 2009 he asked me if I was going to Flagstaff. No, I said, not without him! Beautiful place, just not on my itinerary, yet.

“I might go to Chatsworth to find those people. I don’t know. I was going to have my birthday party at the museum, but I’m not. I asked for the time off,” I explain, “but I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. It makes my schedule a little nutty but I got the time off.”

I settle back, no, I’m not pacing this time. I’m not nervous. I’m comfortable.

"How are you?" I ask him quietly, with meaning. He must know I have a mad railroad crush on him. If he doesn't, he will? Maybe he likes it? It's all within reason and the best because he hasn't gone away. He hasn't told me to go away. After tears and wondering and being angry at a trespasser on the tracks, understanding why Glenn gets mad at that sort of thing, here I am asking the simplest question.

"Barely gettin by but that's alright," he says. "Busy. Working a lot."

"I know that," I affirm. Maybe it saves his marriage. He likes it that way. He definitely likes the money. He definitely loves the trains.

Pearl, my black and white cat, the silent listener to my engineer conversations, is for some reason nowhere in sight. I sit down in my green recliner. Glenn is going to make time for me. We're both on our way to bed. The house is a little warm, the cats are out of earshot, the room mate is tucked away in his room, the crying baby who lives next door is quiet. The clocks tick peacefully and I am happy. This is my happy place. I have my engineer.

"So tell me!" Here we go. I'm not emotional, I'm not near tears, I'm calm in my quiet house in the middle of Hispanic Anaheim. The dishes are done, I'm dressed for bed, Glenn's phone is quiet, he's settling in, too, just like me. It strikes me that I always get him in the most interesting positions, brushing his teeth, chilling out as he says on New Years day 2010, sitting somewhere with his two birds chirping in the background last August, waiting for his daughter, and now ending his day. We don’t talk much but when we do it’s always quiet moments. Tomorrow I have to be up earlier than he does.

"Were you on that train? Yes or no?"

If yes, I'm saying he doesn't have to talk about it. If no, I'll be happy. I'm not demanding and answer I'm giving him permission to answer the question simply. He doesn't have to talk about fatality number 8, he just only has to tell me if he got it.

"No," he says quietly, that old experienced voice lulling my troubled heart.

Once again in this two year engineer to star struck railfan relationship the veteran engineer has solaced the star struck middle-aged adolescent railfan. If he had said yes I would have been ok; it is, as he explains later, the nasty part of the job. After forty years and seven fatalities Glenn has a system in place for coping with all the emotional wreckage, even if he doesn't know it. I think he knows it. I know it. But once again, unlike all my other engineers, he has missed fatality number 8.

"It is an interesting story," he says with his usual Glen flare.

I sit relaxed in my recliner, holding my phone with my left hand, that all important left hand, quiet surrounding me, the temperature bearable on this warm night, the whole experience down to this ten minutes, down to one on one between the former academic and the primary source. This is an academic dream for me, talking to a primary source who happens to be a very nice man.

The human part of the railroad sits in his motel room in Lancaster having successfully run his four trains one more day. He has had a good day up here.

"Well you know that Amtrak in the agreements said they would pay us vacation for 2010. when I was on vacation a few months ago a man got hit at…”

He pauses.

“Sylmar,” I say with all the authority of my academic research mentality. How could I forget Sylmar?

“Yeah,” he finishes. “And then last week I was in block training and another guy took my job and now a guy gets hit at Palmdale.”

Somehow when I read the Metrolink text about the incident two weeks ago I imagine Glenn transmitting “Emergency emergency emergency.” But it wasn’t him. It was his replacement from the extra board. I listen to him now, craving the information. “Now the next time I take off they’re going to think about it now.” This has made two times this year that he’s missed fatalities. It has been a good day up here, for Glenn, anyway. I am relieved beyond measure but more surprised that he called. It’s always worth the wait.

But the conversation does not end there. even though I get up at 4:00 in the morning and he probably gets up at 5:00. I’ll be leaving the house when he’s rubbing his eyes in the morning. No matter. He’s here with me now even if he is hundreds of miles away. Thank God for the telephone! I am solaced, comforted, eased. Next time I might not be so lucky, but this time the train gods have smiled on my engineer and on me.

“I hope it didn’t seem like I was pestering you,” I say, apologizing in my way to him. It seems like I’m always apologizing to him. First not understanding his words out of the cab on our second vocal exchange, then apologizing on his voicemail because I told him he made the big bucks so he could listen to the conductor. I’m always apologizing to him.

“No,” he comforts, “I was just busy.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I say, and I wouldn’t. If he were waiting for my calls he would have no life. All of my friends have lives. I’ll take him this way. He’s just the engineer I had to meet first, all the others are icing on the cake, my academic cake. If I’m digging for gold, it’s only the stories. I think they are all fascinating, and slowly I’m learning his.

He says he only had one day off last week and that he was working a lot. I’m used to that. He always told me to watch my early releases from my job. I admire him because he works so much. I don’t know all his reasons, but he’s sure one of the hardest working guys I've ever met. I’m sure he complains but he always shows up and does his job. He is the best.
“I was worried,” I say to him now. “Not that you wouldn’t be okay. All my engineers have had fatalities this year. You keep missing them.”

I wonder in his forty years how many fatalities he has missed? We know now that he’s missed four, the 221 in January, the 4 when he ran it in the Amtrak days and took time off for a Rolling Stones concert, the one I told him about on the 91 line just after he went to Lancaster, and now these two. He still is my sweet, lucky engineer.

“It’s the nasty part of the job,” he says, paring it down to the truth and taking the emotions out of any fatality.

But then there is gold again, as there always is when I get five minutes of this man’s time. Can’t you just tell I think this man who has run trains for three railroads hung the moon and stars? After Chatsworth I read that engineers can achieve celebrity status. I understand that. I told him a year ago his wife should tell him he’s the best. He really is, in more ways than just trains.

“Are you racing with the kids team?” I somehow ask him, not sure how the transition is made now. I only know it is made, I am happy, I would have been happy whatever he said. The conversation may have been different but now I have my answer. I am solaced.

“A little bit,” he says. “We raced at Irwindale. But they worried about the safety of us bringing our one year old grandson on the track. We told them we won’t be back.”

How can he be on the track? He’d have to be there all alone, I’m sure they were watching him.

“What?” I ask him. “He’s not even walking yet.”

“HE’s starting to.”

“Starting to hang on to things,” I say remembering when Kara learned to walk.

“I am writing a letter,” he says, “my son is helping me with it to mellow it out a bit because I’d just call them assholes and stuff.”

Somehow this makes me smile even if it’s not professional. I don’t’ know the whole story but here’s my Glenn with attitude. I knew this was a man after my own heart. Now I really don’t’ want him angry with me. I told you he could put me in my place. The amazing thing to me is that he admits it and has his son help him with the letter. Maybe he’s a role model for me in more ways than just trains. Yah, I’m smitten, and happy, and surprised. He has attitude. Wonder who wins those arguments with his wife? Him? Well, I don’t know, but I have to remember to ask him about the letter.

“Glenn,” I now say smiling, understanding that it’s not professional to talk in such a manner but understanding the motivation behind it, “You tell them where to go and how to get there!”

“No one talks spank about my grand baby!” he says. And then he asks me the most surprising question ever.

“Guess who he’s in love with?”

“You?” I say. Isn’t every grandchild in love with a doting grandparent? I think I’ve just seen a doting grandparent.

“No. He’s a smart kid. He just sits there and watches TV. So guess who he’s in love with?”

He wants me to know. He wants me to guess. Who would this forty year veteran of the railroad know that I would know? Then it dawns on me. I work for Disney and isn’t every baby in love with Mickey Mouse? Disney got another one, I guess.

“Mickey Mouse?” I ask after a moment of thinking about it.

“Mickey Mouse,” he responds. He sounds so cute. I think Glenn likes that kid. I just think I like Glenn. He is my romance with the rails.

“They sit and watch Mickey Mouse what’s it called Mickey Mouse Clubhouse?” I say. “They keep that show very colorful.”

Now I know one more thing about my friend. His grandson loves Mickey Mouse.

“Well, I’ve got to git,” he says now, reminding me of the first conversation we had by telephone in January 2010. it is quiet there, and here, too.

“Yeah.”

It sounds like he says he might talk to me again but if not then have a happy birthday. He always tells me he’ll talk to me later.

I say something like thank you. I’m just happy he wasn’t on that train.

“Well have a good night,” he says now. He sounds so good.

“You, too. And thank you for calling back. I really appreciate it,” I say.

Tonight we never even discuss the railroad grip. But we do discuss the fatality on train 205. Now, we say goodbye. We have successfully ended another quiet conversation. The engineer has solaced me, and maybe I’ve made him smile. He cared enough to call. My text message must have reminded him to call me or this was the time he had. I’ll take it. It’s time with my sweet, lucky engineer. He really is the engineer of my dreams. And he has had another good day up here and because he has, then I have, too.