Conversations With Glenn: Friendly Engineer
Shelley J Alongi

 

I really don’t think he’ll ask me for the tickets, but they are there. He strikes me as very self sufficient. I like that. I’ll take him in three month intervals, twenty minutes at a time. Like Scarlet O’Hara, I’ll live on it the rest of my life

He sounds tired tonight, or maybe he’s had a couple glasses of wine? Maybe. Maybe he’s just tired. Or maybe I’m just so used to him yelling over the clatter of the MPI or the sweet purr of the EMD, or maybe I’m forgetting when it seemed he looked directly at me from that cab window and spoke quietly because his brown eyes were on mine, when he said “Disneyland should be something everyone can afford,” two years ago now. I don’t know exactly why he sounds like that. He is, he tells me, on two weeks vacation.

The first time I talk to him tonight he says “let me call you back in a minute.”

I’m sitting at my computer and it’s 7:45.

I’ve heard that line before. And, he has called me back so I’m willing to wait.

“If you have a minute, that would be great.”

I’m sure I sound like putty in his hand. Just give him time. Patience.

Call Glenn, something says a few minutes earlier.

But I’m getting nervous. I’ll sit here an think of all the reasons why I shouldn’t call him. He’s on his way to Lancaster. He’s with his family. He’s.

Just call him. A writer friend of mine said once when I said calling him gave me a wealth of anxiety, “Just do it.” So, tonight, I do.

Alright. I pick up my phone.

Lately he has this Bivaldi ringback tone on his phone, it’s distinctly not him, or maybe he has a secret liking for what we term classical music? He didn’t take time to go to a Bivaldi performance that day he missed a fatality on number 4. He went a Rolling Stones concert. But maybe I’m putting him in a box. I wait patiently for the music from the section from Spring to end.

“Hello?”

His voice is a question. I’m so surprised I forget to be nervous.

“Glenn?”

Always that name, the only thing I can think of to say when he answers his phone. Does he need to be reminded of his name? Do I need assuring? Maybe I just like saying his name.

“yeah.”

As if he’s reassuring me, yes, it’s me, Glenn, the engineer of your dreams.

“Something said I should call you now,” I say half under my breath. Does he hear me?

“Do you have five minutes?”

The first locomotive engineer to talk to me, I was eager to take his kindness to heart, it made me brave enough to get his phone number. He gave it to me. If he has five minutes, I’ll take them. If he doesn’t, I’ll wait. It’s the only thing I think I’ve consciously had patience for in my entire life, this incredible waiting. I do a lot of that with pleasure.

“My wife let’s me get away with it,” he says, talking about answering railroad questions.

Ok, but the engineers now I talk to haven’t answered any railroad questions. Not as many as Glenn has. Tonight we don’t talk much about the railroad, or maybe we do.

All I know is tonight I get him. It’s a quiet gentle conversation. He really is a friendly man. And me? I’m not so nervous talking to him. When I think I’m going to call my hands get clammy and my heart races. I’m still not sure why that is, but I’m not going to analyze it anymore. But from the first words it’s easy, friendly, and I’m the luckiest girl in the world. He’s the engineer of my dreams. I hoe his family appreciates him.

I hang up, supremely confident. If I don’t get him again, I’ve gotten one minute. One minute is like the balm of Gilead. I’ve spent most of the day working on my first engineer story, taking it out of the passive voice, adding technical details. I think it might almost be ready for someone else’s proofing; opening myself up to things I may not agree with about my writing.

Perhaps it’s what’s inspired me to call him. I haven’t planned to call him today; I haven’t spent the whole day thinking of train questions. I think, for the first time in two and a half years I’m not all balled up, waiting, though I’m always willing to wait. And, then, perhaps working on the story is my distraction.

It takes two hours to finish my proofing for the night. I put some dishes away, I do whatever needs to be done. I carry my phone with me. No, I don’t’ sit at home for hours waiting for a phone call, I take the phone with me and wait.

It rings. I practically jump out of my chair. It disconnects. He calls back.

“Good morning,” I say. “Is it morning yet?”

“I couldn’t hear you,” he says.

Here we go. He’s quiet.

“Are you in Lancaster?” I ask him. I think the quiet means he’s in his motel room. I only know one thing: tonight I’m not dealing with his bluetooth. I don’t like that thing at all. I’m relieved. I can, for once, actually hear him.

“I’m at home. I’m on vacation,” he says. “Two weeks vacation.”

“first week or second week?”

“First.”

“I’m jealous!”

“We’re going to Disneyland on Friday,” he says with that classic flare that make it so much fun to talk to him.

“For mason’s birthday?” I say.

“Number two,” he says.

For a minute I think he’s talking about a second grandchild. But, no, he’s talking about mason, who loves Mickey.

“You should take Mason to see Mickey at the paradise Peer. They have a breakfast there. You can take pictures and Daisy is there, Stitch, Mini.”

Here I am giving my number 1 engineer an ear full of Disney propaganda. Funny thing is, I do it with pleasure and without a trace of nervousness.

“Where is it?”

I give him directions, follow the signs, it’s got the beach feel, yellow building.

“Is it next to the Disneyland Hotel?”

“Yes. You go into the lobby, there’s a statue of Goofy with his surfboard, you’ll know you’re in the right one. Go down that little ramp and there’s the hallway, pictures of people in 1930s dress, and there’s the PCH Grill. You’ll like it. They come out and dance with the kids.” ”

Suddenly it occurs to me I sound like I do on the phone at work. It really is a fun breakfast.

“Do I sound like I work for Disney?” I ask him. I think he says yes, I don’t remember now.

If only, when he takes his grandson there, and if they go have breakfast with Mickey, I could just be a fly on the wall and watch. I would like that.

He doesn’t seem to be in a hurry. He does have two weeks vacation. Guess I get part of it.

“So how have you been? Working a lot? Ninety hours a week?” air ask him.

“Seems like it,” he says.

“I know you work a lot. I admire that. It doesn’t seem like I meet a lot of people with that kind of work ethic.”

“I don’t’ know why he got married,” says one engineer to me about Glenn’s work hours.

“Maybe he liked her?” I suggest. Who’s to say.

“I owe the IRS money. I’m on a payment plan with the state. I owe the state more than I owe the feds,” he says. “My son could have taken up chess,” he continues, “but he took up racing. I just got back from Vegas. My son raced up there. It costs a lot of money to race.”

Ok Mr. Engineer of my dreams, maybe all your life you’ve done someone else’s bidding? Why cant’ his son be a locomotive engineer? Someone asks me once. Who am I to say? What does it matter anyway? Maybe it makes him happy helping out his son? Everyone has to have someone or something to live for don’t they? Some days what gets me up in the morning is knowing I have to pay people back who have been generous to me, or to pay back bills I’ve brought on myself. Maybe I understand this need to help someone else, though, in my case, I do my own bidding, I help myself out. I have generous parents. Who am I to judge what he does and why? I would never judge a man till I walked a mile in his shoes, and then, I couldn’t begin to understand. It’s what he does. I admire him for it. The truth is plain and simple.

“So are the rumors true? Are you going to retire this year? I talked to Jon, you know him? He said is Glenn retiring this year? I said I don’t know.”

Conversations with Glenn always seem to take such a nonsequitor approach, maybe I just think people should read my mind. I think my mind jumps from one subject to another on most days. And, besides, this Disney things seems to be exhausted.

“Maybe in August,” he says, but he’ll have to see. “I was going to go to Colorado to check out places,” he says about his vacation, but decided not to do that.

“So, are you tired of working for the railroad?”

“I’m getting tired,” he says. Why do I understand that? “I’m tired of running Metrolink trains.”

I understand that, too.

“My dad is 67. He’s tired. He wants to retire,” I say. “He drives truck for Car max. He owns his own truck.”

“Cool!”

“He lost two tires in one day, it can get expensive.”

I’m telling that to a man who spent two thousand dollars on a trip to Portland to go over the Tehachapi loop, the train didn’t route over it, he said, and so then he came back on Saturday and went over it by himself.

Seven hundred dollars for two tires must be pocket change. No wonder Larry asked me if I was a gold digger. All that money? Well, he’ll spend close to that at Disneyland if he hasn’t already. The thing is to enjoy it, I suppose.

Or, he says, he’ll work for two more years. It doesn’t make sense to work past age 62, he says. Guess he’ll just have to be number 1 for two more years. Seventeen guys are retiring this year, Bobby says. Maybe not Glenn. So, who is number 2? I ask John this once but he doesn’t know. Glenn knows and he tells me. Neon of my other engineers have known who number 2 is. Now, I know. Guess I know who number 2 is, but they know how to run the trains.

He’s on tier 1 and tier 2 he says in regard to his retirement plan. He can make fourteen thousand, he might go drive truck to do that. Or he could go work at Disneyland running the locomotives.

“Oh, that’s right. You know cliff. I set up one of the engineer’s honeymoon reservation about four years ago. Joe Jackson. Found out he’s a big collector. But I haven’t met Cliff yet. I think he works nights.” But that’s pretty much based on what I don’t know.
I tell him my story of ringing the bell on the Holiday at Disneyland. I recite to him the names of the locomotives. Who knows what he’ll do.


Silence, pleasant, no birds chirping, no shrill female voice, no bluetooth, only two people united by one thing: trains.

“Do you know when 3751 is coming back?” he asks, as if I should know.

“No. I didn’t know it was supposed to come back. Where did it go?”

“The Grand Canyon,” he says. Was it? I don’t chase 3751, or haven’t yet. Everyone else seems to.

“Have you ever run the steam locomotives?” I ask him.

“No. Not the big one.”

“So why is it that people chase this?”

“Something from the past,” he says.

Everyone has their reasons. Some people take pictures. I talk to engineers.

“I’ll let you know if it’s coming back,” I say. And I will.

I don’ think it’s coming back, I don’t remember it coming back in May more than once. Was it a test? It was a friendly question.

“So tell me about Mr. 79. Am I getting in trouble for asking that?”

The only thing I can get from this is that he isn’t sure what Eddie’s talking about, m maybe he’s got the wrong Glenn? He says something about paperwork being bad on the locomotive, or something and metrolink making conductors out of inept mechanics. I’m not sure what this is all about.

“Are you really going to spend two years in Lancaster?” That is if he doesn’t go this year.

“Or Paris if they open up the Paris line.”

It’s closer to where he lives, he says.

The part about the mechanics I’m not sure where that came from. Someone missed something somewhere. I only know it’s the second time he’s mentioned inept mechanics to me. No wonder he’s tired of running Metrolink trains. At least that’s what he says on Monday May 28. Who knows how he’ll feel about it on Tuesday May 29.

It is now, during the conversation about retirement and engineer status that the phone dies. He has warned me of this. I tell him Carey tells me it doesn’t matter what number he is, he’s not the number 1 engineer.

“Do you know what Carey said? He said it didn’t matter what number he was.”

For the first time in almost three years I’m completely comfortable talking to Glenn. I know I’m not nervous because I’m laughing, telling him this story. All I know is Glenn is very patient with me. Very very patient.

“It matters about what job you get,” he says.

I know that. Carey knows that, too. It was just a funny story I had to tell him. Glenn must be tired, or extremely relaxed. He’s not teasing me. But he’s friendly. I’ll take him.

During the discussion about Pat, the phone disconnects. I don’t call back. He has said his battery is low and he doesn’t call me back. He may have gone to plug in the phone but I don’t try to call him back. It’s getting late though neither of us has to get up early for work. Who knows what he has to do? Maybe nothing, maybe everything. My plans for Tuesday include laundry and going to see trains.

Whether I get to see the trains and catch up with the crews on Tuesday remains to be seen. If it happens or doesn’t happen, I have gotten to do the one thing I’ve been dying to do for three months. I’ve talked to my number 1 engineer. I leave three text messages. If you want tickets to Disneyland let me know, here’s the address for the Paradise Peer, and enjoy your vacation.

I really don’t think he’ll ask me for the tickets, but they are there. He strikes me as very self sufficient. I like that. I’ll take him in three month intervals, twenty minutes at a time. Like Scarlet O’hara, I’ll live on it the rest of my life

 

 

Copyright © 2012 Shelley J Alongi
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"