Metrolink708: Railroad Birthday Tonight, Monday, July 12, I will get back to Los Angeles in time, it looks like, to take the 608 to Fullerton. Ah, Shelley’s train; yes, I do think it is Shelley’s train. I wonder how many engineers I will meet on the 608. So far, I’ve met two of them. I will be on that engineer’s train tonight. “In L.A. waiting for 608, Glen’s old train,” I text to my profile, “Bobby’s train.” The 608, much like the last time I took it, that would be some time in September, is filled with young business people holding lap tops, texting, talking. The journey is plesant. The conductor walks me to the train and shows me where the first car behind the engine is. “I would like to sit in the first car,” I say. “I know that engineer and besides it is a forty mile walk from the cab car to the front of the train in Fullerton.” Okay so it might not be forty miles, but it’s logn enough so that I will miss waving to Bobby. I am one of the first people to be at the door when Fullerton is announced, making my way down the narrow steps, stepping confidently onto familiar ground, the place of so much magic. I almost run to the front of the train, waving as I reach the window. I really have figured all this out. Bobby calls my name, waves, and he’s off. I am home; home on my birthday; the end of a very fun and adventurous day. I have had cupcakes, a cake, had a very nice birthday party on a pleasant day, met two new conductors, learned the name of one new engineer, seen one I know, missed one, texted one, and am now o my way to the patio faithful to give a reckoning. They all want to know what the day was like. I sit down and eat a turkey rap made by Daisy at the cafe, even indulge in a huge ice-cream cone (It is my birthday), and spend a few moments down at the east end of the platform where Jeff says I’ll be married by the end of the year. Yes, it has, in many ways, been a railroad birthday. It has been the best. Hopefully I made the engineer smile. I smiled. Railroad Birthday The patio at the fullerton station that Rich Connell wrote about in the Los Angeles times after the chatsworth accident, describing it with blue striped awnings becomes the gathering place for a birthday party on Sunday July 11. One engineer, a ton of rail fans, the ring leader, and people you might not expect now gather for cupcakes and ice-cream. Janice brings the cupcakes, Curt the Scooter Boy brings the ice-cream, and everyone here has a checkered past. “My checkered past is showing her where to stand to find glen,” Janice announces. Maybe so. Maybe Glen thinks so. Maybe not. Maybe, as Libby Hayes in San Bernardino says on Monday, July 12, my 44th birthday, I just make him smile. If meeting that man, my first train engineer, and losing him twice due to railroad operations which he initiated, brought me so many tears, I hope I make him smile. I hope he never cries. And I had the best birthday ever! I smiled. Fourteen people show up on the patio for my birtheday party. I’m not quite sure how I got so many people there. I think curt did it. So who shows up? It is an impressive list of the patio faithful, the people who have watched me strive, succeed, experience, lose, and amuse or confuse the railroad engineers. Bruce, the one everyone in Amtrak knows, Mikey, Mo’s friend, Dave Norris, the one who knows everything, his wife Kathy, Tim his son-in-law, Anna his daughter, John, a switch key enthusiast, Janice, Bob, the ring leader, the one I wanted to meet two years ago; Dan the one who walks the platform every night, curt, Scooter Boy, Norm, the BNSF freight engineer, Rosalyn, Jeff, her husband, Mike from Victorville, Nick, his friend, Mark, his friend, oh yeah, and me. Five people show up for dinner at the Spaghetti Factory, Worku the cab driver ho took me to get my cell phone for free when I had to pick it up from the Federal Express office in November, Rosalyn, the lady who rescued me the last day Glen was on the 91 line, her husband Jeff who I haven’t seen since their wedding, Rochelle Pierce from the Tuesday night bible study. The conversation ranges from how we became Christians to how many proposals of marriage we’ve turned down and how Jeff got rid of all of Rosalyns suiters and how I turned down two proposals. Well, I sort of turned them down. First I said yes, then I said no. Yes. No. I figured if I really wanted to be married I’d probably have done it by now. Hey I went and met the engineers. I think I could probably find someone to marry. One man who thought about marrying me about fourteen years ago once told me that whatever I set my mind to do I would succeed at it. Well, I met the engineers. Tonight, really is the culmination of two years of discovering trains. Finally, all of the components of my train journey are helping me celebrate. What fun! We sit up on the mezonine where the train group had it’s Christmas party the day Janice gave Glen my Christmas card, and I get the coolest birthday gift ever, a basket full of vegetables from Rochele’s garden, and a plant from Rosalyn. Curt on the patio, after showing up late with the ice-cream, but showing up, gives me the classic toy, the monkey who bangs cymbols together and walks, or waddles on a flat surface. It brings a great deal of amusement to me the adolescent, star-struck ralfan. “Norm represents the twenty engineers I’ve met this year,” I say, as he arrives late. He is our BNSF engineer. Apparently he’s free to go back to work now, running freight again. He was in the hospital about two weeks ago but apparently has returned to us unscathed. He has one more chemo treatment. Will he run freight again? Only he will tell. “What are you doing these days?” someone asks him. “Absolutely nothing,” he says. “You need a hobby,” says Dan. I think he really just wants to go back to work. What is it with railroad engineers? They are the most work oriented people I’ve met. I wonder how the younger ones are? Do they want to go home like the people at my work want to? I don’t know. This one definitely wants to work. I hope he does. Tonight he represents Glen the number one engineer, Cary, the engineer who doesn’t show up on 607 on Monday because he has a dentist appointment, Frank who Is probably somewhere, Bobby who I see on Monday as I step off his train and run to wave just before 608 pulls out of the station, Sam, Jason, Veronikah, Kathy, John, Rob the extra, Chad whose name I learn from Steve the conductor on the 607, Cary’s morning train, and maybe anyone else I haven’t met yet. In October of 2008 I said I wanted to meet engineers. Well, I guess I have. As Curt says, they come from far and wide to see me. “I met two nice conductors today,” I tell Jeff sitting on the east end of the platform on Monday July 12. “She’s going to be married by the end of the year,” he predicts. Wow, that would be some accomplishment. Two very determined men couldn’t do that. It would take one heck of a good try by a very responsible engineer to accomplish that task. Prince charming would have to be pretty charming! Norm represents them all and he is married. “Today I met a conductor who knew you. Who doesn’t?” I text Glen as I wait for 304 to take me to San Bernardino on Monday. “You’re still the best.” On Sunday, sitting on the patio, the weather is perfect for a birthday party. The bone chilling June and first part of July has turned to the comfortable desert evening breeze and temperature more common here. The great thing about living in the desert when there is no tropical pressure over us is that the heat evaporates quickly at night and the weather cools delightfully. I wouldn’t trade it for much. We’ll have our hot, August nights, but the cool ones in July, even if the temperature during the day is starting to become more normal, will do just fine for now, especially on the eve of Shelley’s 44th birthday. Train 4 breaks up the delightful party but not before a lot of laughter and teasing is enjoyed by all. “I didn’t get to make any wishes,” I say. Janice has brought no candles. “I wish for,” I say, thinking hard. “Don’t’ say,” someone tells me. “Well I don’t want to wish for the ending of world hunger or world peace.” I don’t know what to wish for. Engineer happiness. Make all my engineers happy. Give Glen someone who appreciates his hard work. Give bobby enough money to take his kids on the Disney cruise and make the house payments on the house he just bought. Let Norm do lots of work. Don’t let Frank break any more railroad rules. Give Rob someone to talk to at every station so it doesn’t get lonely up there for him. If Veronikah’s train hit the guy on State college in April, don’t’ let her feel too badly. It wasn’t her fault. Give John someone who will be there tomorrow. Give them all a good night’s sleep. I pass the time after train 4’s departure down at the east end of the platform, listening and talking. Tim an danna, Dave’s daughter and son-in-law are there, she says something about fish heads and her dog who is having seizures. Freights pass. Nice, J.B. Hunt cars, oil tankers, none of the engineers wave, or stop, they’ve got places to go and people to see. Amtrak sneaks a train in here and there. Is there a different train on track 3? Does one train to San Diego come in on track 3? Dave tells me the Riverside train switches onto the track that takes it to Riverside just after getting out of Fullerton. The Riverside train on track 1 switches at Buena Park, he says. I know the Ocean Side trains, on track 3 switch at the Orange subdivision. Sometimes on a low signal, Amtrak switches to track 2 and then continues their route to San Diego just after leaving the station. I’m starting to become familiar with where the switches are. You see, I do learn things when people aren’t teasing me about engineer chasing. I meet engineers so I can ask questions. Yeah, sure, someone will say. I just kno it’s a lot of fun. On Friday, a Barstow-bound freight comes in on track 2, a northbound Los Angeles Amtrak on track 1, and a southbound or is it a freight on track 3? Three trains appear at the station, blocking the engineer’s run to the café. Track one clears. The engineer in the foremost locomotive hops out, comes across track one, goes into the café, and reappears at the gate. He goes across track one carrying food. He disappears into the train. Another engineer comes out and climbs down to the front of the train and fiddles with some chain somewhere. This is all so much better than cable! I stand there, shyly. I miss my chance. I don’t go talk to the engineer by the gate. I don’t stand across from the window. “I can see the guy sitting there, his shoulder, his window is open,” says Don, the older man who sits on the planter with his wife Mickey on the weekends. Another train comes and goes. “Should I wave?” “Well, his mirror is in the way I don’t think he could see you.” All around us kids take out their cameras. One of the engineers talks to some of the kids and still I hang back. Sometimes it’s all about the show. Finally, the tracks quiet, the breeze cools, the kids satiated, the train on track 2 moves. He waves. I am requited. I wave back. There! Another nameless Prince charming. Add him to the notches on my engineer belt. Before the party, things get interesting. Saturday is a strange day. I don’t usually go to the station on Saturday but I’ve found that new bus route home so I will probably go a time or two. But tonight I miss the bus so Chris Parker one of the railfans has decided that he will drive me home. It won’t be till late, he says. That’ sfine with me. I don’t have anyone to account to, I can get home when I like. Pearl might ask me where I’ve been, but I don’t have to tell her now do I? I certainly don’t tell my room mate when I’ll be home. Sometimes I don’t know when I’ll be home. Elena, Danny’s mom is there. The foamers look at the computer model, check the track lineups, wait for freights. There are quite a few of them. The conversation is quite revealing. Amidst the cool breezes, the clattering freight trains, the vocal projections of the computer, Elena tells me that she lives with her parents, her sister stepped out in front of a train, the boy who created the video on Youtube for Rob Sanchez is in the same model railroading club as her son and Is taking flying lessons. I tel her about how I made the plaque for the engineer and now how it hangs on my wall. I tell her that Rob Sanchez told the boy not to be a pilot. He said he’d show him how to be an engineer and he would want to be a pilot. I don’t’ want to be a pilot, the boy says in the text messages. I wonder how much of this information will get to her son. Why did the boy pick the Journey song “Open Arms” for the video? So many questions and maybe someday some answers in a trusting environment free from media scrutiny. Why did he pick that song? Before I know it the time to depart has come and I am home again, only to rise on Sunday, go to church, go grab a light lunch, and then head down to the Sunday festivities. It all leads, to Monday morning, the big day. Monday is the big day. Today I turn 44 years old. I don’t’ mind bein middle aged. I’ve found a new avocation. I feel like a high school girl with a crush on about ten engineers, but maybe only one. Amarried one with a wife with 22 cats and forty years experience. “I got the best the first time around,” I tell Libby. “I don’t mean to pester you but it takes four engineers to replace you,” I explain to her when recounting the different text messages I’ve sent. She laughs heartily. She is amused. I hope the engineer is amused. I will keep sending him little messages as appropriate. He’s such a tease. “He can be high strung sometimes,” Mikey says. I’ve caught glimpes of that. I believe it. But he’s still my number one engineer. Today it is all about getting on the train to San Bernardino, being transported in the “big hunk of steel” these engineers run. “I don’t’ know why I’m so fascinated by the engineer,” I tell Don. “They run a pretty big hunk of steel,” he explins. Yes, but it’s the story of the engineers running the steel that fascinates me. It’s the know-how and the story, the personality, and the whole mystique of the train thing. The only requirement for any relationship is that you run a train. I need no responses. Only acknowledge and wave and sometimes answer questions. We usually end up talking about more than trains, except with Glen. Glen is the train guy. Everyone else runs the trains and we talka bout other things. But today, sitting on the west end of the platform waiting for train 607, one I haven’t benn on since October when I met Glen out of the cab, four trains pass me. Make that five. There is a freight that sneaks in somewhere. Maybe I see six trains. Amtrak to San Diego shows up on track 3. Glen’s old train, 703 to Riverside, rolls in, then the train to Irvine. Train 605 to Los Angeles comes before all of them, and then I make my way to the top of the ramp. I want tsit in the cab car today, maybe I can see Cary. I finish my breakfast burrito, arriving after a myriad of happy birthda wishes from John the bus driver who goes to Calvary Chapel Cypress, buy my burrito and take it down to the platform. Now I stand at the top of the wheelchair ramp, the conductor pulls out the train’s assistive ramp and I hop on. This is when I discover that Cary has a dentist appointment and will not be running the train today. Cary has missed a few days here an there. This is why Glen is the best. Everytime I showed up at his train he was there. These guys miss work, sometimes, like mere mortals. The train trip is pleasant, punctuated by the metallic clatter as the cars switch onto the tracks leading to Los Angeles Union station. The gentle hum of voices comes to me, blocked out by the headset I wear as I listen to the telephone edition of the Orange County Register. No one talks to me; I guess I look busy. Others around me absorb themselves in newspapers and laptop screens. The occasional babble of the engineer’s voice approaching some signal, the rythmic clap and resonance of the neumatic bell gently wafts to us, the faint sound of bells at railroad crossings, the sounding of the horn on the cab car as we approach crossings and finally enter Union Station on track 7. Track 5 is where you can catch a train to Lancaster, Steve the conductor says. It’s probably my sweet petulant magical Glen’s train. Track 6 is where I am headed; next to my engineer’s train, headed in a completely opposite direction, San Bernardino. It is a commuter’s paradise; I am on, it seems, my commuter train to Paradise. Steve the conductor, dressed in his blue and white Metrolink uniform, escorts me to track 6 wher I await train 403. “I don’t’ think Cary remembers my name,” I say. “I’m sure he does.” Steve is a tall guy, well maybe five feet nine inches or so. “He calls me young lady,” I say. “Oh.” We walk between the wall and the train on the safety stripes, turn right and head over to the track. Around us those big hunks of steel hum efficiently, stretching high overhead. “What’s your first name?” “Shelley. Tell Cary his 6;17 meet was here.” Steve laughs. I bet I hear about it tomorrow. “I miss talking to Glen.” Steve is a neutral third party. “Glen Steel?” “yes.” “I know him I worked with him for a logn time.” “Glen is awesome.” I can’t remember Steve’s response. I’m sure he knows things I don’t’ know. Whatever. He doesn’t know my Glen. My Glen is awesome. He’s the number one engineer. Besides I have to ask him something about chatsworth. Steve and I part company, he to his day, I to my trip to San Bernardino. Train 403 pulls out of L.A. on time, the ride is pleasant, I spend it on the phone listening to the newsline service, reading about British Patroleum’s attempt to cap the gushing well that has spued oil into the gulf of mexico for three months. Wonder if they’ll do it this time? Someone sets bags down, goes to see how many stops there are before their departure station in Rialto. My headset blocks out most of the sound, but it is a pleasant trip. The idea today has been to treat myself to a train trip. It has been six months since my early morning jaunt to San Luis Obispo, SLO, with the Southern California Train Travel group. . That day it rained all the way up and back Today the weather is balmy, early summer, and when we reach San Bernardino, hot! “On the seventh day” I text to my Facebook page, “God created air conditioning.” Libby’s husband Allen meets me at the station. I am surprised by the intelligence of the security guard who shows me where the entrance to the parking lot is. The station is a six track affair, with a gate that blocks entrance to it when trains are not loading passengers. A Metrolink ticket machine sits at the entrance, a depot which I to date have not investigated, sits off to the side. There is a museum here, Dave Norris tells me, but as of yet I have not investigated it. I stand here now, a group of African Americans stands across the parking lot, chatting; someone rides a skateboard. Many have described this place as undesirable. I do not know. I am sure it has its own personality. Libby’s lunch sandwich shop is much as I remember it, small, perhaps a five or six table affair, a soda fountain, restroom, kitchen. I comfiscate one of the tables, putting my red bag with all of the day’s accoutrement’s on it on the floor, taking out the usual items that accompany me on a table: cell phone, and diet soda. The wallet, the cane, money, anything else goes in the bag, whatever color or style it is on any given day. Today it is the red monogrammed bag bought from J. C. Penny last year. The black and gray one has become a cumbersome affair, at least for the summer. Perhaps in the winter when I carry the green sweater, the jacket, gloves, and other essentials it will reappear again. The straw purse I talked about in an earlier essay has been consigned to the circular file. It had a defect I was too lazy or busy to return it. It was too small, anyway. Now, everything fits nicely in the red bag with the addition of some canvas shopping bags to carry other items as necessary. Today the red bag accompanies me, sitting meekly by the table, the cell phone shining in its maroonness, beckons me. Four hours pass. We talk. She works, taking care of her regulars, knowing their orders, updating them. A petulant (that seems to be my favorite word loately) child comes in with its accompanying adults, cries, plays a video game, eats. A man who has given her some kind of sign for a bus stop comes in and orders lunch. The CD plays, a voice I recognize but the name escapes me. I make several phone calls, update my Facebook profile constantly. “It may take me two hours but I will eat this whole sandwich.” “I almost ate the whole ting. It was the soda that stopped me.” People send happy birthday wishes; I respond. I relax. Libby pops in an out of the chair, we discuss how she got a down payment loan from her mother and how the business almost went under last year due to construction near her spot on West Mill street. She smiles when I tell her about the various messages I send to Glen. It’s interesting how people interpret his response. Lilian says he might think I’m stocking him. Libby says I make him smile. Knowing the very little I do about Glen, I would say that he doesn’t lie to be overwhelmed, but that he does read my messages and gives that little chuckle of his, or just simply says: “Yeah” in that Glen way. Someday maybe I’ll find out what he really thinks. I think, sometimes, I just complicate things. I like Libby’s interpretation. “Sometimes work is a drama. I will trade with you one hour, maybe” I text later on in the week. “Bobby on the 608 says he won’t do Lancaster again. Smile?” Hey, I look at it this way. I now know someone who ran the Coast Starlight. He’s the one who makes that bell jangle across those shiny steel rails, blows that horn as he approaches L.A. Union station. On any given day, sitting in the car waiting to cross the tracks now, I sometimes wonder if I know the engineer. Yes, I think I’l take Libby’s interpretation. I make him smile. I smile. The whole day makes me smile. Soon it is time to go back to Los Angeles. The trip back is pleasant. A road is closed and Libby has to take another way to get me back to the station, but there is plenty of time and we do not miss the train. I don’t care where I sit on the return trip. On board once again, the headset blocks out the crying baby, the lady sitting behind me burping the obviously very young child, the people across the aisle talking about prison or family, or something. The conductor with a speech impediment is competent, he doesn’t soun bored like the next conductor. Tonight, Monday, July 12, I will get back to Los Angeles in time, it looks like, to take the 608 to Fullerton. Ah, Shelley’s train; yes, I do think it is Shelley’s train. I wonder how many engineers I will meet on the 608. So far, I’ve met two of them. I will be on that engineer’s train tonight. “In L.A. waiting for 608, Glen’s old train,” I text to my profile, “Bobby’s train.” The 608, much like the last time I took it, that would be some time in September, is filled with young business people holding lap tops, texting, talking. The journey is plesant. The conductor walks me to the train and shows me where the first car behind the engine is. “I would like to sit in the first car,” I say. “I know that engineer and besides it is a forty mile walk from the cab car to the front of the train in Fullerton.” Okay so it might not be forty miles, but it’s logn enough so that I will miss waving to Bobby. I am one of the first people to be at the door when Fullerton is announced, making my way down the narrow steps, stepping confidently onto familiar ground, the place of so much magic. I almost run to the front of the train, waving as I reach the window. I really have figured all this out. Bobby calls my name, waves, and he’s off. I am home; home on my birthday; the end of a very fun and adventurous day. I have had cupcakes, a cake, had a very nice birthday party on a pleasant day, met two new conductors, learned the name of one new engineer, seen one I know, missed one, texted one, and am now on my way to the patio faithful to give a reckoning. They all want to know what the day was like. I sit down and eat a turkey rap made by Daisy at the cafe, even indulge in a huge ice-cream cone (It is my birthday), and spend a few moments down at the east end of the platform where Jeff says I’ll be married by the end of the year. Yes, it has, in many ways, been a railroad birthday. It has been the best. Hopefully I made the engineer smile. I smi"
Copyright © 2010 Shelley J Alongi |