Metrolink708 Making Connections The thing to remember about this week at the station is that it is becoming part of me. It is a place to create, to make new connections, to put human faces and voices with those huge machines that run the rails. Maybe it is because I can’t see the faces in the window that I have to go meet them. Maybe it’s because I had to go find a live engineer to take the place of the connection I made with a dead one. I don’t make connections with everyone who gets into vehicular crashes. The ironic thing about making connections with the train engineer in the Chatsworth crash is that now I don’t have a TV. I spend so much time at work or the station or out doing other things that I didn’t replace the TV when it went out. I cancelled the part of the cable that didn’t have me personally interacting. We have the Internet. We have the phone. We don’t’ have a TV. My room mate doesn’t watch TV. She says she watches it at work. Janice asked me what I did before I came down to the station. So what did I do exactly? When I think about what I did an the things I got involved with and the things I get involved with now I see the same thing. They all involve people. As much as I say I like to get away from them, I find them everywhere. They are at work; they are in the Toastmasters clubs I join; they are in the events I volunteer for: cooking for the bible study at the station, wrapping Christmas gifts for the children of prisoners, getting involved with the national Federation of the Blind chapter, going to my church, selling coffee and doughnuts and cooking hamburgers for students at Cal State Fullerton. Looking through my contact list on my phone I see the names of people that I worked with before and after trains. Each person represents a different chapter in my life. There are people who are not in my contact list that I used to spend time with; people that I haven’t seen for years an people that if I called them would know who I am and we’d most likely take up where we left off. So what did I do before trains? I got involved with people. As much as I don’t’ want to be with them sometimes they are there. I wouldn’t call myself an extrovert. I’d say I was shy; maybe sometimes afraid to do things till I get a push. No when I go meet locomotive engineers I’m afraid they’re not looking at me but judging by the reaction from one of them two days ago I guess they do know me. Standing and watching as a train passed us curt told me that the engineer turned his head and smiled directly at me. I can’t think of how I knew him. I may have sat up by the end of the platform and waved at him or something but I’ve never made a connection with that 5:08 train engineer. He may have just been smiling but curt insisted it looked like he knew me. Maybe it was frank who used to be on the 708 train. Who knows. I think sometimes the most interesting thing about the station is the people anyway and not the trains. There are the engineers of course, the ones who always ask me if I’m working. Even John on the 608 who it turns out will be on the 608 on Monday asks me on Friday April 30 if I’m working. “Are you working this weekend?” he wants to know sitting up there looking down at me. Sometimes it’s hard to hear John over the clatter of the locomotive. Curt says he looks like he might be insecure sometimes; not shy; not like he doesn’t know his job, just insecure. I don’t know if it’s that so much as he hasn’t had as many years as Glen has yelling over freights. I noticed with Glen that if he was running the MOPE he would make extra effort to articulate over its clatter. Instead of saying “yeah” he would say “yes.” This may be why Chris thinks that glen smokes. “He has a smoker’s voice,” Chris says. I’ve made this observation before, the one that states that he may just be used to yelling over freights. John needs some more practice. This week he talk to me but sometimes the words are lost. Of course some of Glen’s words were lost, too. I stand near the train, I touch it, I’m on the safety line, my head up. I don’t’ turn my ear toward the voice like Andy does. I haven’t remembered to do that lately. “Did you go to Disneyland?” he asks once. “I work there.” He sees my ID prominently displayed on my necklace holding two brass bells, a rose-shaped bell, the switch key, a little charm, and the I’d. The air hisses, capturing the water in the line, releasing pressure. I’m standing right next to the release point. “I work for Walt Disney Travel.” The engine idles. Behind us someone walks down the stairs, a skateboarder goes up a ramp, pounding the wheels onto the concrete. The laughter of bob and Janice drifts across the tracks. The wind is sharp and cold, cutting through my new green sweater. It is time for John to take his leave. “See you tomorrow,” I say. Tomorrow,” is his response. All week I haven’t been back to see the engineer on the 708, the one involved in the suicide on Monday night. If it’s true that the crew gets three days off then the next time the regular returns will be Friday. As it turns out I don’t’ get to the train on Friday either. On Friday I get off work early and head straight to the station. I am tired. If I go home I’ll be tired. If I stay at the station I’ll be tired. I might as well just stay at the station. “Are you guys gossiping over here?” “Yes we are.” It is the weekly Friday gathering of the Friday patio faithful, the older men all probably at least sixty years old; retired from productive lives of running fullerton and having the country their way. They all seem to have held jobs, raised families. This group is not the transient population that dots the benches along the platform drinking forty ounces of whatever. “Do you have room for me?” I want to know. Pat always has room. He’s the one who told me months ago that if I was ever looking for a boyfriend he was available. I wonder if an engineer with a moustache and glasses with a wife who has 22 cats thought I was trying to pick up on him. “24 million tomorrow. Your ticket to paradise” I text to that engineer, sweet, magical petulant Glen. There will be millions given away if anyone draws the winning ticket in the Mega millions lotto. Months ago Glen asked me if I play the lotto when I didn’t have money. So I have to get him back. He’s always looking for more money. He transferred to Lancaster to get more money. I wonder if he transferred there to get away from 22 cats. What do I know? Not much about that. I’m doing well. I don’t tear up, well maybe for a few seconds on one day, and I only text him twice. I haven’t gotten one of those “send failed do you want to retry?” messages which means he hasn’t blocked me. Not yet. I doubt if he will block me. I think when I call him I’ll be pleasantly surprised. It’s like that with anyone I call. We always take up where we leave off. But here, today, at 3:00 sitting on the patio drinking water and watching an endless procession of freights go through the station I’m sitting with the gossiping crowd. Later I will talk to the engineers. I could talk to the engineer on the 602 here but I don’t get up and make my way over to the other side of the tracks. I will meet all of them eventually. Usually what I do is go over to the other side of the tracks or to the west end of the platform when the regulars aren’t there. I haven’t done any four train meets this week. In fact I haven’t been over to see Cary this week except the one day when he wasn’t there, Monday night. As the Friday patio faithful slowly disperse I get up and hoist my new black and gray bag to my shoulder. This is when I see Curt. He is going out to find out how the taxi drivers are doing. Apparently they’ve been arguing about who gets what fare. Such petty things but who really knows what is going on there. Tom the golfer who smokes nasty cigars isn’t there. I think he may make an appearance once in a while but if I do see him it is either as I am going to the bus or somewhere else. This week there aren’t too many people who try to warn me off the tracks. People ask me if I want the elevator but I say “no thank you” actually politely if you believe it. “Let me help you find the stairs” someone says. After that time when I yelled at Glen I’ve been trying to be nicer. It’s pretty bad if I yell at someone I actually like when he says it’s the job of the conductor to help. Most of the time I just tune people out or just nod as I pass. How much energy does that take? Less energy than responding strongly I suppose. If someone makes a physical move toward me that’s a different story. I manage to get through the week without having to apologize to anyone. My most regular engineer connection is John. I’m starting to like talking to him. I’m going to have to ask him a question or two before he runs to his next route. He said he works on Sunday. He tells me this on Friday, making me wonder why it is that every engineer asks me if I’m working on the weekend. Perhaps misery is looking for some company. Friday is probably the most eventful day. After that engineer flirts with me with his beautiful smile I decide to go up to a church that does a free meal on Fridays with curt. I haven’t been there in awhile. The last time I went there was when I stored a box for a man I knew who was homeless. I eventually told him to get his box out of my place. But his lasting legacy to me was this one church that provides a good meal when one is in need of one. Riding the public buses I hear the transient population talk about each free meal but sometimes those free meals are just the thing. Between walking down there and taking two buses I make it, partake of the meal and then go back to the station. The clock chimes 7:00 PM as I make my way over the stairs and wait for the 608. Months ago Andy called 608 Shelley’s train. I think it really is becoming my train. It is the train I can make with more regularity. If Glen wondered if I knew he was married or was at all concerned about what I thought his intensions were it would stem from the fact that I made that train with the most regularity and still do make it. I noticed that the guy who talked to Rob Sanchez on the 111 talked to his replacement too when I was out in Chatsworth. Bobby the regular engineer is due back on Tuesday John says. But tonight I run down the stairs. “How are you doing?” this is John’s greeting. “Good.” I am panting. “I just made it! I was running down the stairs!” Tonight the Amtrak 785 is late. Train 4 is held in a siding somewhere because there are people on the 785 who need to make connections with it to Chicago. When I stand there running across the bridge telling someone with a three year old child that they’re about to see several trains the station agent is making some long drawn-out announcement about the two trains making connections. “Everything is late,” I tell John. “Just as long as I get home on time,” he says. I don’t’ ask him if there’s anyone at home waiting. I assume there is. I haven’t met an engineer yet without something waiting for him, even if it is 22 cats. Can you imagine your bed full of 22 cats? I’m not saying Glen’s bed is full of cats but still the visual is overwhelming. “Are you working this weekend?” This is John’s question. “I can’t believe he asked me that,” I say to the people over the bridge. “At least he doesn’t ask me about e rest or tell me to watch them.” “It’s because he doesn’t’ know about them,” Janice says. Glen’s advice given in that “approach…diverging clear” voice still rings in my train befuddled head. That gentle man who can’t say no, who puts up with whatever he puts up with, who does whatever he does for whatever reason he does it gives good advice. NO wonder I apologize to him two and a half weeks ago. Sometimes I really do miss him. I probably miss my idea of him but I think I do miss the man who says “I don’t’ have a clue” when I ask him if it is possible that Rob Sanchez could really not know a freight train was coming. “I don’ have a clue” he says in that practical Glen way who pares it all down to “a bad wreck out of Chatsworth.” “Maybe he was texting in the bathroom. Mostly the engineers are texting in the bathroom,” someone says on the patio Friday about the accident. There is a discussion going on about to trains meeting at 42 miles per hour and watt happens to locomotives when they meet. We’re talking about new locomotive specs and new Metrolink cars built in South Chorea and finished here in Colton before arriving in our station some time in 2011 or maybe even 2012. “He was in the cab,” I say. Must I defend this engineer? I’ll always defend him for my own reasons. They may not be good ones, they may be simply because they are human reasons. His picture is hanging above this computer. Sometimes people look at it. None of my engineers know that I have it. It doesn’t matter. I do miss this man sometimes, the one who pares all my emotional drama about Chatsworth down to a bad wreck in his blue collar rancher kind of way. Curt says Glen looks like a rancher. I am planning to call him in a few weeks and tell him the very short version of how I met him and I’m even going to tell him about the character bearing his name. But not before I get done with some of my other projects. “I want to tell you something fun, I told him in our last conversation, the one that Shirley says I don’t need to have. She is convinced I should lose that number. We shall see what happens. In the meantime I’m making new connections. John on the 608 will be somewhere else after Monday of next week. I will try and establish connections with the 708 engineer. The thing to remember about this week at the station is that it is becoming part of me. It is a place to create, to make new connections, to put human faces and voices with those huge machines that run the rails. Maybe it is because I can’t see the faces in the window that I have to go meet them. Maybe it’s because I had to go find a live engineer to take the place of the connection I made with a dead one. “What do they do?” I ask Andy sitting on the patio on Tuesday. My question is in regard to the engineer. “How early do they have to report to their shifts? One time glen was in the engine an hour early. I’m trying to find out what they do.” “Paper work,” He says. “Get track warrants. Get a cup of coffee.” “Track warrants?” “To tell them how fast to go during certain areas.” Many times there may be track work going on or the condition of the rails may be such that speed restrictions are necessary. “What do they do after say they get to L.A. and they’re out of service?” “Finish up paper work and go home.” Slowly I’m learning more about how this whole business works. “I have to look up the Santa Fe engines,” I tell Dave Norris, “so I can know what to ask Glen.” This is the academic training in me, the one that wants to do homework so that whoever answers the questions will at least have a good question to answer. Sometimes my questions are very basic. Sometimes I want to know things but I’m not sure how to ask them. In the conversation that Glen and I had about Chatsworth I mentioned a signal name and he responded to it as if it were just a natural part of the conversation. I wouldn’t have known to mention that signal if I hadn’t done my research. Before I call him again I’ll read up on Chatsworth to see if there are any new reports. I know the final is out and of course it does place the blame on Rob for texting. I think that was a given from the beginning, but I’m sure there is something else I’ll discover in the process. “Let’s hope no one misses any signals,” I tell Dave. “Yeah,” he says. We both know what that means. Before I discover any of this I’m here at Fullerton haunting the platform, waving at engineers, getting smiles from them, talking to Jazzy Jeff from Vegas, Ray from Georgia. Tonight, Friday, Curt brings me a necklace that Hank one of Ray’s cronies found. It is broken but I fix it with two safety ins I have holding silver bells on my purse. I am a walking repair kit stems. So now I have a tangible Souvinere form the Fullerton station. This is my station necklace. Curt is the scrounger; he finds shoes, hats, he even found a scarf that I accidentally left tree. He uses it and I use on that he found there that didn’t originally belong to me. If curt finds lost luggage, bipods, scarves, shoes, and necklaces, I find the engineers and I want to know their stores. So if there is one thing to remember this week bout the station it is that it is becoming part of me. This is my place of escape, my retreat from an electronic world, a place where people are still important. It is a place of stories and I’m here to discover them.
Copyright © 2010 Shelley J Alongi |