Train of Thought

I’ve never lived in a place where I couldn’t hear a train. Close by, far off in the distance, I’ve sat in my room at night and heard the haunting trumpet sound. Some nights in NY, I felt the rumble, and listened to the metal on metal of brakes. Other times its just the moaning sound of the horn signaling itself. Was there something on the tracks? A cow? A hobo? I’ve ridden trains so much and often as a means of cheaper transportation, that I don’t really enjoy it. Still, it’s an odd part of my history.

I rode the train to school every day beginning in third grade. I was 8. One morning we were late, I somehow managed to run down the hundred stairs to the platform and get on a second before it started to pull out. My brother, age 7, walked in 2 minutes later wearing his enormous backpack, his hands skimming the tops of the seats on either side of him, his eyes wide and horrified. My step Dad had thrown him on the train as it was moving and he had almost tipped back out from the momentum. Another time in fifth grade I was in my classroom at school when Elizabeth Eagleson was escorted in by the principal, who sat her at her desk and then kissed the top of her head, before quietly walking back out. We all turned to look at her and she burst in to tears. She could barely get the words out but she had seen a businessman slide under the train. She said his leg popped like a grape under a hammer.

I rode the train back and forth to NY when I lived there. I took it to visit my grandparents in Rhode Island. I traveled to Florida, South Carolina, Boston, Washington and back to Pennsylvania. The longest rides with the dining cars, snack bars and smoking sections were the worst. From a lack of sleep, I not only swore I’d never step foot on another ghetto, stink-filled, chug along train, I hated anyone else who ever sat along with me, before, during or after. Then I’d see a train scene in a movie or be with a child who thought it would be fun and I would say to myself, it’s not so bad. As soon as an hour passed though I’d be swearing all over again: drunks, moaners, religious crazies, perverts, runaways, families, my own included, I’ve ridden with them all. I remember infestations of crawly bugs on the head-rests, and jheri-curl smears on the windows. I remember singing out loud to myself one time, my head pressed to the window. In a monotonous stupor I sang, certain no one could hear me, and who cares if they did.

I heard a train this morning, probably at Union Station, and thought all this.