She Likes Trains: Journeys To Friday
Shelley J Alongi

 

It has been a sad, and yet happy experience this Friday February 4 at the Fullerton station. There is a sense of family, a laugh or two or even three, the loss of a station mascot, and maybe here and there, a passing comment about trains. It has been a good night and in some way, I’m doing what I like to do best and what I wanted to do from the beginning of my journey here: talk to engineers, and learn more stories.

The Loss of a Mascott

It’s hard to know what to say about this week. Most nights I haven’t been to the train station, opting instead to do shopping or go home and fall asleep. I must be tired this week, the winds buffeting southern California reeking havoc with people’s sinuses and probably knocking over a few trees. It has been cold in Lancaster, the temperature hovering at 23 degrees Farenheit on one chilly morning. Lancaster shows up in the morning listing of temperature readings across southern California. We have our share of cold temperatures this week, too, 31, 33, 42, just to name a few. But 23 in Lancaster? When morning comes for my Lancaster baby, the bestest engineer ever, I am lying here wondering just how much more time I can get away with curling up against the chill. The cold.

My weariness, my work schedule, or whatever conspires to stop me from going to the station dissipates on Friday at the end of my work week. In two days it will be time to start my new schedule and I will be happy for it. But one trip to the station, Friday February 4, reveals one piece of information, one that doesn’t have a flavoring of engineer drama, or even, really has to do with trains. Well, it may have to do with trains indirectly but it does do something that most of us probably don’t want to admit. The event that I learn of on Friday night is full of good memories, and maybe just a few tears.


It might show how much of a family exists at the train station. Those who gather at the east end of the platform learn this week of the death of one of our station mascots, the one who barks lustily at trains, the black dog, Ninja, Robert’s dog, a station fixture. The event surprises us, though perhaps not Ninja’s owner, because we’re so used to seeing her appearing with regularity on her Monday, Wednesday an Friday walks. Ninja has been ailing, though, Dave informs us, and I suppose we all knew it. Robert says that two years ago she weighed 47 pounds and then gained it, and then lost it again. She was on pain medication, she had hip problems, she was a lusty old thing, barking mightily at trains but choosing to sit by the tracks rather than chase the younger dogs. She would come sniffing for food when it was in the area, and she would bark to visit her pea mount often, but she was having troubles and so last Saturday, January 29 she left us to go bark at the big trains in the sky. She went, says Dave, to that big dog house in the sky. The news causes a sort of respectful hush to fall over the gathered group, schoolteacher Tom, Kathy, Mike, a small group tonight. I’m not quite sure I heard him right but subsequent conversation reveals that I indeed have heard correctly. The reaction is varied on all accounts after the initial silence. Mike immediately starts talking about how it was hard for him to replace Bam Bam, his cat, when he lost him. Mike whines in a childish kind of way. Tom talks about how Ninja’s quality of life may have deteriorated. I sit there thinking that we saw her last week, she had met Helo, the younger black lab two weeks ago.

It is an active night for freights, maybe one of two interrupt our contemplation of the barking mascot, maybe a sign that we really are a family of sorts. The loss of a black lab engenders more sympathy than hearing of the death of anyone who steps in front of a train. Perhaps it is the innocence level associated with each event: a person knows better, the dog isn’t necessarily consulted but the humans decide out of kindness to undertake such an emotional task. The parting of the ways of humans with their animal companions here sometimes produces sympathetic responses.

Showing up later, Robert tells us that he had planned this whole event but didn’t want to let us know of its eminence. “I didn’t want to spoil anyone’s Friday,” he says, and I now wonder where he was last Friday? I don’t remember much about where he was, and I am sure we saw Ninja, she’s such a part of the station that no one can really imagine not seeing her here.

“Woof,” Dave calls her, has joined her other colleagues. I know that engineers, some I know and some I don’t, would sympathize, even if they don’t sympathize with me standing in the cold with no jacket, when I have a cold. You’ll have to read all about that in “Making the Engineer Happy” written at this time last year. At this time last year, working sixty hours plus, Ninja still prowled the train tracks warning us as if lights and bells could not, that there was a train approaching.

Now her owner gave us no similar warning of her approaching end, and yet we all are silent, respectful, sad for him, perhaps comforted for the dog who languished happily among us. Even I who am not a particular fan of dogs feel a sense of loss. Two years ago when Rob Sanchez plowed his train into that Union pacific train, I said I would be okay with being a fan of trains, but not dogs. I am still not particularly attached to them, but I can relate to losing something that is valuable. I would miss my kitties if I had to put them down for any reason.

Someone asks if Robert will get another dog. Perhaps sooner than he thinks, he says, because walking her was such a part of his life.

Hey Robert, I didn't want to say this last night because of all the silliness and Mike whining about losing his cat but I heard what you said about perhaps getting another dog sooner than you thought because there was a hole in your life and I just wanted to say that you should do that because it's a compliment to having Ninja for so long. I know she was important to you. Good luck.
 
Thank you for the thoughts, is the response to my Saturday afternoon email. When you decide the time is right I’m sure we’ll all be happy to meet your new friend. And remember your other one. Pearl says good night! This is what I say in response, and I am sure that we will indeed be happy to meet his new friend.

Married with Children Engineer Style

The evening isn’t entirely filled with somber thoughts of the black dog. it starts off on a quiet, kind note as I make my way to the station and get way laid talking to Barbara, Ed’s sister. Fifty years ago, she says, she was in girl scouts. Our conversation occurs among the red and green of signals. Red over green, green over red, a freight here and there, waiting for the usual event of the evening. I hear Janice talking inside the café, but it isn’t till I make my way over to the bridge for my 7:04 train meet that she sees me.

“I didn’t’ know you were here. I didn’t see you standing by the fence,” she says as I stand ready to mount the stairs.

“I heard you talking inside the café but I was talking to Barbara. I meant to come over and talk to you.”

“Where have you been?”

Janice is one of those besides me who doesn’t always show up because of a conflicting work schedule. She is back to work now, of course, and I explain about my changing schedule.

“I’m so excited! I’ll get to be here early starting next week!”

I make my way across the bridge after these words, determined tonight not to miss the bell. I pace the area between the fence and the marker, waiting. Train 4 comes in, followed close behind, or at least on the other track, by Metrolink 608.

“Hey Shelley!”

“I made it! I didn’t miss the bell!”

“Where have you been all week?” asks Bobby, the stock broker engineer.

“Working! And then I would go home and fall asleep!”

“How late do you stay out here?”

I think he’s talking about tonight, but I can’t be sure.

“Ten or eleven,” I say.

“Ten or eleven!” he has a way of saying things that just makes me laugh. It makes me chuckle just thinking of it. His voice rises in astonishment, not sure he’s believing what he’s hearing from his most faithful train meet.

“You do have kids!” I’m laughing.

“Only BNSF trains run through here now right?”

“That’s right! You’re the last ticket to paradise.”

Indeed the last Amtrak train shows up about 11:20 or so, going north.

“It’s Friday,” he says now.

“yeah!”

he must be amused, he gives that gentle laugh that leaves me smiling on the platform as he pulls his train away.

My engineers, they scold and comfort me. They’re all gold! And this week my number 1 engineer is freezing in Lancaster, perhaps he can be warmed knowing his best station girl is sitting here, encouraging him to turn off his alarm, just happy to know he is out running his train.

“No more switch keys or locks for me this month,” I text on Monday. “The rr show where I got them is Feb 13. I guess I’ll have to buy the rr bag instead! Have fun!”

I’m sure glenn got the message. I’m sure he’s fine. All my other engineers are fine, they make their way home and I go back to the platform where I see the usual group. They disperse about 9:00 and I make my way to the other group, the foamers.

Out So late!

“Hello gentlemen! What are you doing here past your bed time?”

“Putting things in your way!” Robert responds.

“There are always things in my way!”

Robert gives his lawyer laugh. The conversation varies: exclamations of astonishment at seeing the slab train, pictures that belong online and pictures that don’t; pictures of someone’s wife, a man leaves and says he’ll be back next week; hanging out with ninja at the Cajon pass; the best place to get a hamburger in Anaheim Hills, and expensive sushi. Robert tells me that if I ever get caught on railroad tracks when a train is approaching, to lie down under the rails in the ballast and the train will pass over me. I don’t think I’ll be doing that any time soon but it’s always nice to have a backup plan.

Van shows up with a story about being approached by someone with bolt cutters who wanted to harm him. Robert sends him away with a detached “thank you!”

“I guess we have to keep our eyes out for someone with bolt cutters,” he says.

I explain the story of the stolen bike from last week. Curt appears once in a while and talks about an abandoned bike.

Dave Norris, before they finally leave, says that last night, Thursday, he had a fever of 102 and is still plagued by a chronic sinus infection. He’s on steroids to shrink the swelling, something else and something else. We tell stories about our cats. Cats adopt us, Robert says. Bucky adopted Dave and Kathy when his mother was killed by some such means. Strangely, I can’t remember now what it was; I’ll have to ask him when I see him again. Robert tells a story about his father taking a dog who was chained to a fence and giving it a better home in their own sprawling back yard. I tell the group of my engineer adventures for the evening. There is talk of trucks doing impressive feats of driving and freeway antics. Robert’s wife saw an accident when she was a child, someone turned right and hit three children crossing the street on their way to school. Someone, to my astonishment, can’t tell the difference between an EMD and a Genesis locomotive. Give him time, he’ll figure it out.

Somehow through the station announcements of arriving Amtrak trains, we talk about a restaurant we both know well.

“Is that the one on Raymond?” Robert asks me.

I think about it. Yes, it is!

“My son puked all over the counter,” he says, after eating pancakes and milk. That visual is overwhelming! Robert says he gave the man who cleaned up the mess a $20.00 tip. I bet he did!


Tonight, we’re all here on our various journeys to Friday, remembering, relishing, laughing, happy that the temperature has warmed enough to let us stay here just a little bit longer. The foamers pay reverence to the stack trains, flat cars, trailors, tankers. Ed makes bad jokes at some point. “I’m going to be like a hockey player and get the puck out of here!” he says.

I relax, debrief from what has been a better week. Work stresses are mild this week. My main concern this week is about a manager who is finally taking steps to encourage her team to do better, perhaps steps she should have taken long ago. The backdrop to all this station activity as I flirt with nameless engineers, wave, and distress, is the thought of my bestest engineer, and a missing black lab.

The cool night winds its way to a close. The railfans all leave, and I make my way to the front of the station where I call a cab and head home.

It has been a sad, and yet happy experience at the Fullerton station. There is a sense of family, a laugh or two or even three, the loss of a station mascot, and maybe here and there, a passing comment about trains. It has been a good night and in some way, I’m doing what I like to do best and what I wanted to do from the beginning of my journey here: talk to engineers, and learn more stories.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Shelley J Alongi
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"