Storymania - She Likes Trains: The Engineer's Right To Know by Shelley J Alongi

She Likes Trains: The Engineer's Right To Know
Shelley J Alongi

Ok so how was I supposed to know on that Friday night, September 12, 2008, when I turned on the TV before going to bed that my life was going to change, forever?

“I got lucky,” I tell dave Norris once. “I met the best, first.”

Yeah, I did! And all because I sat up and watched footage surrounding the collision of two trains. Now I think, after the last two years and my life literally being turned upside down in more ways than one, the engineer has the right to know; the right one, the engineer of my dreams, does!

I mean it, my life has changed, forever. Or maybe it has just come full circle, I don’t know. If you really want to know the funny thing about it all now? I don’t have a TV! It went out a year and a half ago and I haven’t replaced it yet, simply because I’m never home to watch it now. I’m out enjoying my new hobby, trains! And working! And shopping! And doing, whatever! But mostly learning about trains and making engineer friends!

So I tried to make one on Monday, or no, I didn’t’ really try to make a friend of an engineer, I went to the train to see who was on it, my train, train 608, the train that Andy christened last year as Shelley’s train. Yes, 608 is my train, and so because I got a day off on Monday November 29 I went down to the station after I got some work done around here and went to sit on the west end of the platform, the place where the planters are lower, there is a gate to the lawn of the Old Spaghetti factory, and there is not much traffic or crowds. It is busy, don’t get me wrong, especially when 4 comes in, and if the commuter schedule is active, but it’s generally pretty quiet, especially in early afternoon. Train 609 pulls up, and I wave. I think bobby is on 609 but I’m not sure. He or whoever is there doesn’t say anything though I always imagine that they wave. Usually the engineers waves, as a courtesy, I guess, but this time, they stop for a while and then the train pulls away.

“hey!” yells the conductor or someone out the window, “get away from there!”

Not sure who he’s talking about. It can’t be me.

“You were probably standing too close to the track,” says Janice later when I tell the group gathered in the café about it.

“No,” I say, “ I was sitting on the planter. Well ,I think, if Bobby is on the 608 and I know he used to be on the 609, I’ll just ask him and see what the raucous was about.

I approach the 6 car marker now waiting. Train 4 is late. The group that gathers in the café to await trains and escape the biting cold of this November day scatters along the platform, waiting.

“I have to go see if the light will talked to me,” Janice says, indicating that she will be outside looking to see what light is green or red and who will be where.

“You better get over there,” Bruce says, “It’s 6:50.”

“There’s a green already up there,” says Janice.

It is cold! I climb the stairs wearing this year’s cold deflecting gear, a mauve jacket, a green sweater. The blue jacket and red sweater that made so many appearances to meet glen last fall are long gone. Now I hold a red and black backpack and my cane, this time it has a marshmallow tip, which I’ve decided is adequate. I stand waiting to the left of the caution sign. The train pulls up, bell clanging; it is my despised MPI. Maybe the blue and white car is pristine today, maybe not. I know one thing. There is no response from the engineer. I wave. No response. Okay so maybe its’ not Bobby, and maybe it’s an extra. It’s not John, he’d be asking me if I’ll be here tomorrow. It’s no one I know. Maybe it’s Veronica. Lord, I hope not! And then it just could be because the engineer doesn’t know me, he doesn’t want to make the effort to talk to me over the clang and clatter of the Boise Locomotive Company’s cheap engine. And maybe the engineer is one of those introverts Glenn says Amtrak wants to hire now. An introvert wouldn’t yell over the clatter of one of those engines! Sweet Glenn, would do that. He’s had 40 years practice But tonight my engineer is not Glenn. That’s obvious!

The train pulls away. I walk away, not completely dejected, just a little disappointed.

Do I have to start this all over again?

Dave Keller, the trucker, is on the other side of the tracks. He has forgotten his phone tonight so his wife can’t call him constantly asking for food. Apparently she has some health problems and he brings her takeout on a regular basis. He gets so annoyed by this. It’s the way of a man with a maid, I think. He now sits with us.

Dave Norris, with his beard and his notebook sits on the planter, 4 comes and goes, Bob and Janice depart, Curt slides up on his bike, and so does a freight.

“I can see the reflection of his glasses in the window,” Curt says. My new, nameless prince Charming freight engineer sits and completes paper work, sort of glances out the window, and gets the yellow light and disappears carrying his load to Barstow, lovely downtown Barstow, as one sweet engineer has put it.

“That just fascinates me,” I now say walking up to the planter and sitting down by Dave Norris.

“What does?” He’s looking at something, I can’t tell what it is.

The station goes quiet, Valerie and Agosto sit by the door of the station, even Curt, German curt is here tonight, so early, it’s only 7:15 or so.
“You can be right there,” I explain to Dave, “looking at him and he looks out the window and he doesn’t say anything. I always wonder who’s up there and what they’re doing.”

“It’s all part of the mystery,” says Dave.

“It makes me want to make up stories,” I say.

And it does! I now have two railroad engineer character stories. I’m hooked.

“Yesterday I almost bought a train set,” I tell Janice and Bob, Shirley, Jaris, and Bruce in the café earlier this evening. “But I didn’t. I figured if I ever bought a train set or show up at a locomotive cab with a scanner I’m going to know I’m hooked.”

No one says anything.

“I’m getting ready to buy more switch keys.”
“More keys to weigh you down?” asks Janice.

“I guess so. It’s so if I ever go to some BLET thing I can go up to the engineers and ask if I can trade with them for their switch keys.”

If you don’t know, Disney has a bunch of characters in different series that they put on lanyards, they are pins, and people go through the parks trading each of the characters for different ones. When I talk about trading switch keys with the engineers, that’s my reference point, the Disney hobby. But wait, you say, it’s rude to show the engineer your switch key! Yeah, that’s just my joke, but I think it shows that despite not having a scanner and not buying a train set, I am hooked. And oh yeah, I do have an engineer’s phone number! That is way, way better than a scanner and a model train set!

But I tell you all of that to show you one thing: my life really has changed. So tonight, Monday, for some reason, when I walk away from train 608, I feel cheated or something. I couldn’t ask the engineer, or they chose not to talk to me. Really, it’s okay. I think as I cross the bridge, something I’ve done so many times since that fateful September day in 2008, that it took me three weeks to get a vocal response from Glenn, though he saw me long before he yelled down from his cab window: “She likes trains!” So I think I can give this time. I should have a little patience. Look what it led to?

So what did it lead to, you want to know? Well, we’ve gone from waving to each other on the patio platform to Glenn asking me on September 2, 2010 what I was fighting in court. The engineer and the rail fan, mainly through persistence from the rail fan, I think, a desire to have a friend who runs trains, have progressed from waving, to talking, exchanging phone numbers, learning his story, learning the wife and kids’ names, asking questions, to me on that September date after months of tears and texting, wondering why I was picking up my phone and calling a married man, was it for questions or something else? After all that, starting with September 12, 2008, I’ve given the engineer my deep dark secret. I’ve told him what I was fighting in court; a garnished paycheck, and he has said nothing. He is sweet. He hasn’t stopped talking to me. Maybe a man who runs train 40 years knows a heck of a lot more about the world than I do and maybe he just doesn’t care. But he does care, he thinks, after watching me walk up to his train for six months, and answering my phone calls and explaining how the railroad works, that he has a right to know what I was fighting in court, especially since I told him I was going there and he dispensed his no nonsense advice: don’t stress, just deal with it!

So who knows, flashing back to me standing by the train tonight, what is in store for me and all my engineers?

I know what’s in store. I’m only going to meet more of them. I haven’t’ talked to my engineer for two months but he hasn’t told me to stop texting and he doesn’t respond inappropriately, he just goes out there, gets up every morning, rubs his beautiful brown eyes, gets his coffee and his keys and whatever else I’m forgetting, and runs the train, so he can wave at middle-aged adolescent rail fans on platforms and then ask what they’re fighting in court.

Believe me I don’t’ mind telling this one what was going on. He, after putting up with me, and being his kind, friendly self with all his flaws, has a right to know!

There’s something else that occurs to me this cool Monday night as we sit there and freeze and listen to Walter tell stories about penalties his son pays to Bank of America for overdrawing his account, what he buys on sale, how he warms up both sides of the queen bed with the elecdtric blanket and puts his feet on one side, that there’s something else that has happened because of my persistence. I have learnd to read between the lines, or have grown so comfortable with talking to one engineer that I read into his words a stronger meaning. Let me explain.

Remember last March there was engineer drama. Mo told me that Glenn asked her if I knew he was married. He would feel better if I knew hir attentions were plutonic. I knew both things. Besides, Mo didn’t have a right to imply that there was trouble. If Glen had questions he could have asked me himself. Glenn doesn’ make issues of things; everyone at the station just knew she was trying to cause trouble. Glenn asked me during our short telephone conversation a simple question.

“what did Mo tell you?” he spouts, classic Glenn, strident, intense, lovely? It’s one of the qualities that endears me to him, this vocal expression. So what did he really say? He said, in plain English, what did Mo tell you? But here’s what he really said.

“What did MO tell you and what kind of trouble was she trying to start now?”

If Glenn were to read this he’d probably have forgotten about it by now, or he’d probably just say, yeah, that’s what I was asking. But my analysis of the situation puts in all the extra meaning because he knew she could start trouble. If I hadn’t gone out to his train night after night, week after week, and tried to get his attention, none of this would have happened. So I shouldn’t give up so easily, who knows what engineer adventure will happen next!

I don’t talk to Glenn much these days, only when I get the chance to call him, something that I want to do, soon. I have questions about signals and some scenes in my Brett mcCarley stories. I have questions that I haven’t asked the engineer since I wrote them down a year ago.

“I got lucky,” I tell dave Norris once. “I met the best, first.”

Yeah, I did! And all because I sat up and watched footage surrounding the collision of two trains. Now I think, after the last two years and my life literally being turned upside down in more ways than one, the engineer has the right to know; the right one, the engineer of my dreams, does!