Conversations With Glenn: Engineers And Angels
Shelley J Alongi

 

Engineers and Angels
Tonight, Monday, after a long three day weekend, he has promised to call me back. I believe him. Four years after that first meeting on the platform from the cab, from the time he said “She likes trains” to this day, I believe him. How many times has he proved it? I want to talk to him I say a week earlier. He’s gotten to the point where he will call me back more regularly. The understanding is when I have time for you I will call you back. And, if you come on my train I’ll talk to you. I’ll buy that. Tonight, after calling and his “I’ll call you back in a few minutes”, perhaps after he passes the place where we lose calls or where the fuzz is watching, he does indeed call me back. Tonight’s conversation is natural, comfortable, sometimes formal, but mostly not. It’s the best of everything, really, not having much to do with the procedure on the railroad, unless you count annoying crew callers and such. But, first things first, anyway. On tap for tonight, we have bodily comfort, Angels, vacation, the railroad, and not working six days. You couldn’t ask for anything better on a cool, pleasant Monday evening in a high rent district or just over the hill. Yeah, I got the right one. I’ll take him.

“Good night, there, queen of Bells,” says my number one engineer on another radio transmission several weeks after tonight’s conversation. We’ve come a long way since asking about signal visibility and Chatsworth, crossings, and the gamut of things we’ve covered connected with the railroad. Now, I have questions to ask about the book. But, we don’t cover them tonight. What prompted tonight’s conversation I do not remember. I only know it’s time for another one. In true, I never know what we’re going to get fashion, it is a unique one. In the middle of trying to find room mates, moving, and keeping up with all my obligations, it is time for a conversation with my number one engineer.

But, first, it’s that time of year again. Time to take four year-old mason to Disneyland. But, Houston, we have a problem. The increase in price, five hundred dollars for a dad with three kids to go to Disneyland, says my number one engineer, is too much. So, in dramatic fashion, he’s boycotting Disneyland. So, what will you do this year? Well, I might take them down to Lego land. Kids like Legos, don’t they? Ok, but by the time you spend money on transportation and food you could have gone to Disneyland. He doesn’t seem to get this. Maybe the highest paid Metrolink engineer doesn’t need to pay attention to pennies, though he certainly seems to understand going to Disneyland costs one. Ok, whatever, I say. You can go on Amtrak free can’t you? He’s going to take his kids on the train. Yes, he says. He can go on Amtrak, free.
But, that’s not cheap either, I say. And, besides, and I have to get this one in just because I am who I am, you spend way more on that race car than Disneyland.
“But,” he insists in his own defense, “That’s fun!”
Ok, fun. I get that.
“That high octane,” he says. “It burns your eyes.”
Fine, make the engineer cry. Maybe it’s the money thing and not the octane. What would I know? I just smile. Whatever, dear. We’ll have to see just how that pans out.
Now, it’s on to other things both train related and not. Just conversation between friends.
I’m moving, I say as he’s making his weekly action-packed trip down the mountain, or over it. “I fell behind on the rent. I can’t get anyone who wants to pay half or share expenses who will stay.”
“Can’t you get any help?” he asks.
Apparently not enough help. But, I say, if he means government help I went off government help to earn more money. I don’t want my earning potential limited by government money.
He doesn’t say anything to that. Who knows what he’s thinking? Or, maybe he’s not thinking anything.
Where are you thinking of moving?
Well, near the train station, I say. Or, near work. Or, I might move home to Norwalk for a while.”
“You mean you live with somebody else?”
He’s always known me as an independent, self-sufficient, obsessive, star-struck, love sick, train ravaged working girl with a nine to five job, two cats and a crush. Now, he’s about to meet me as all those things without the high rent payment. Some kind of rent payment because I insist. I am not a free loader, not even if I crash in an old room with my one parent and the college dorm. Yeah, it’s a college dorm. But, for now, tonight, I’m still in my two bedroom, two bath, kitchen with a window place, just packing boxes and talking to the bestest engineer in the world.
“Are there restrooms in the Metrolink locomotives?”
Not sure how this one started, it just did so here it is in all it's splendor.
: No, says my number one engineer. There are in the Amtrak ones, he says. I knew that. Also, there are restrooms in the locomotives used for the freights. There has to be restrooms because sometimes stranded out on the line you may need one. Ok, I now ask him, so what do you do? You have to go to the one in the train, he says, something which I pretty much figured out from common sense. But, I thought I’d ask anyway. Well, I say, always trying to solve a problem, you could try a catheter like situation like they have done in small planes in the pasp. Some of the guys pee on the engine, he says. “It’s disgusting!” He always makes me smile when he says things like that. I can imagine it is disgusting.
Driving along in his truck, then, he tells a story. Well, there was an engineer, he says, who was flying a plane, a small Cessna. He had been in Mexico when "the water got ahold of him" and he was about to explode. He had to go where you "sit down right quick" he says. Oh, no. I'm sympathetic and chuckling because in true Glenn dramatic fashion, he just can’t say the guy had diarrhea. It still makes me smile to this day.

But, if that’s disgusting, then Amtrak is annoying because they don’t wash the windows on the locomotives, he says. So, you hit someone, I say, and you can’t see anyway and then that? That seemed to be the crux of that conversation: Amtrak was annoying. My favorite railroader in the business 44 years come September 30, 2014, and he should know. Or, he likes to complain. But, he doesn’t complain about other things. Maybe he just feels comfortable complaining to me about the railroad whenever time allows. Apparently, time is on my side tonight, because the sweet annoying litany continues.
Sometimes railroads have the strangest rules. An engineer he knew heated chili on the engine, as it rolled along the track, warming up his dinner or breakfast. I was eating oatmeal, says Glenn. And someone who works on the railroad was annoyed. The engineer got reprimanded for heating chili on the engine. And, Glenn says, he got in trouble for smoking on the cat car. That isn't anything I haven't been doing for forty years, says the engineer or my dreams. My engineer, he's such a sweet whiner and somehow I feel for them and I know that mine isn't the only company that talks to its employees for the strangest things. I'm sure as time goes by I'll have lots of stories to write down. For here and for now, I’ll take these.
The direction shifts a little, like the wind, I suppose. So, what did you do on your vacation? I wonder if he remembers calling me and saying he was going on vacation. He doesn't seem surprised that I knew about it, so he must remember calling me. HE went to Needles with a conductor. He didn't say which conductor. I can't remember what he saw there; there must have been something spectacular. It’s hot there, I say. But, the temperature didn’t seem to concern him that week.
So, I ask, because I always want to know, are you working six days? The hiss of the surrounding ambiance as he drives the 138 to Lancaster, taking the cut off at Right wood comes to me on my fancy phone. I pace the floor as usual, doing what, who knows now, just talking to my railroad crush, the engineer of my dreams, the right one. No, he inflects with that classic Glenn flare; he's not working six days. Why not? Well, he's already paid the IRS and the state, he says. He has worked hard to do that, my hero. And, the new guy who is in charge of assigning replacement crews or whatever he does, says, he doesn’t know. Call the office. This just makes him mad, and he expresses that in stronger terms. The other guy he says came from the freight railroads. He was a real railroader. He's passionate as always, my friend of the rails. He would let me stay in the motel because he knew it was less expensive to do it that way and have him in position. The usual procedure is to pay the crew $100 for gasoline if he's dead heading. But, this guy currently in charge doesn't know anything, he says. My Glenn, he's so expressive. I just love him. I just listen. I'd like to work six days, he says, to have play money. Wonder how long before he's working six days again?
“Well, they call me at 3:30 in the morning to go back to Lancaster,” he says. Who? The crew callers?
“Hold on a second, Glenn,” I say, stopping some streaming conversation.
“If they’re calling you at 3:30 in the morning isn’t that a violation of the eight hour rule?”
“Well,” he says, “It’s 6:30 there. They’re not paying attention.”
So, it is technically a violation on the west coast but not on the east coast. He calls them a choice word better said in person than written on electronic or any other kind of paper.

“So, who’s your favorite Angel?”
In a direction completely unrelated to my ravaged train state, we have to talk about the Angels. I’m always texting him the final score. You probably already know, I’ll say, especially if a game ends just after he starts his last trip to Lancaster. Howie Kendrick, number 47, he’s my favorite Angel, I say. And, it’s not because of his baseball record. No, it’s because he shares the same birthday as mine, July 12. Different years, of course, but the same day. I’ll take that.
Number 27, he says, Mike Trout, he’s the best guy in baseball. This sentiment echoes that of the Angels broadcasters, at least. We’ll have to check with the Trout tracker for the most updated stats.

A couple of days later, much to my surprise, he calls and leaves me a voicemail which I discover to my amazement the next day. As I sleep soundly, my number one engineer calls and asks me the score of the Angels game.
“Sweet dreams,” says my really cool friend. I just think it’s adorable. Sweet dreams and red is right. Well, I add the red is right part.
This is the third voicemail I’ve gotten from him in a month or so: the first to let me know he’s going on vacation, the second to check the score, and another one later because I said I needed to talk to him. I needed to talk to him because I was stressed out about moving to Norwalk, which I did. “I had a stressful week,” I say to his voicemail on that day. I needed to do something fun.
“Well, sometimes you have to have a hectic week so you can know what it’s like to have a un hectic week. Hang in there and have a good night,” he instructs on my fancy phone voicemail. I smile when I get it.
My number one engineer is a doll.
But, on this night as I sleep and the clock ticks and we both refuel, his voicemail sits undiscovered. In the morning I wake up and discover it. He called to check the Angels score. That is so adorable! I’ve never had anyone do that. Years ago, as a child, I thought baseball was boring. As a young teenager on trips to Oregon to see my grandmother my mom would watch the games with her. Curled in my chair I’d read a book, trying my best to ignore the game. Now, years later, after buying Angels tickets in the year the rent goes south, I now get a call from my number one engineer, the highest paid guy in the whole Metrolink system, asking me for the score. Anytime, sir. Call me any time to check the score, I say. Any time. And, keep your red on, #1 Engineer. Keep wearing that red hat with the halo because red is right. And, you’re my #1 engineer. Engineer lineup! Angel Lineup! But, only behind my #1 Engineer!
Too soon he’s on the exit to Lancaster. Our time is almost over. We’ll talk again, he says. I’ll be waiting.
Tonight, Monday, after a long three day weekend, he has promised to call me back. I believe him. Four years after that first meeting on the platform from the cab, from the time he said “She likes trains” to this day, I believe him. How many times has he proved it? I want to talk to him I say a week earlier. He’s gotten to the point where he will call me back more regularly. The understanding is when I have time for you I will call you back. And, if you come on my train I’ll talk to you. I’ll buy that. Tonight, after calling and his “I’ll call you back in a few minutes”, perhaps after he passes the place where we lose calls or where the fuzz is watching, he does indeed call me back. Tonight’s conversation is natural, comfortable, sometimes formal, but mostly not. It’s the best of everything, really, not having much to do with the procedure on the railroad, unless you count annoying crew callers and such. But, first things first, anyway. On tap for tonight, we have bodily comfort, Angels, vacation, the railroad, and not working six days. You couldn’t ask for anything better on a cool, pleasant Monday evening in a high rent district or just over the hill. Yeah, I got the right one. I’ll take him.

 

 

Copyright © 2014 Shelley J Alongi
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"