Conversations With Glen Sweet Engineer Dreams And Metrolink Nightmares Tonight, Sunday October 8, is my dream come true? My engineer’s annoyance with the railroad is my pleasure? This is what I wanted. I wanted the story. Tonight it was all about sweet engineer dreams and Metrolink nightmares. The last time I talked to Glenn, the forty-one year veteran of the railroad, the man who was hired on the Santa Fe as a fireman on September 30, 1970, trained at Barstow, ran trains before there was an Amtrak he reminds me on one occasion, took time off to go to a Rolling Stones concert and missed a fatality on 4, has experienced seven fatalities and has missed two this year, I was just about to buy a railroad grip and he wished me a happy birthday from his away point in Lancaster. Today, Sunday October 4 is a different story. I’ve only made a few trips to my regular haunt, the Fullerton train station, I’ve texted Glenn a few times to wish him a happy birthday and then a happy 41st rr anniversary, and then to tell him I’d call him in a month. He doesn’t respond to most of my text messages though I do know that he gets them. It is enough. I’ll take it. After two years, and three weeks, he hasn’t run away. I guess tonight we can have a conversation on a variety of topics, he trusts me now, he knows I’m not trying to do whatever it is wayward women do. He’s always been a professional and the absolute very best. “You’re the best,” I remind him on occasion. “My wife doesn’t even tell me that,” he says once in his house in the high desert. “You tell her I said,” is my admonition. Hope she tells that man everyday he’s the best, because despite getting moody and a bit prickly at times, and despite his artful use of language, shall we say, this man really is the best. He is the engineer I had to meet when I had to meet one. I’ve met more since him but he is the very best. Tonight, Sunday, I finally get a chance to leave a message on his voicemail with only the faintest hope of a return phone call. “Glenn it’s Shelley. I took a day off and I have a chance to talk to you. I’m working on the weekends now and so it’s harder for me to call you but I make a valiant effort because I really miss talking to you and I miss the trains, too. I’m picking up double time an Dover time, extra sixth day shifts crunching my numbers so today I have a chance to talk to you.” I’m surprised at the even tone I keep today. I remember my first call to Glen, sitting in the Santa Fe Express café so nervous I hardly knew what to say. He had answered his phone that New Year’s Day, half asleep, or at least extremely relaxed. He has always, even if it was only five minutes, taken time for me. “Glenn is very friendly,” says the woman who has known him since 1998, the woman who tried to start trouble between us. But if he can know her for that long and still talk to her than I’m easy; I’m a piece of cake and I’m curious about his trade and he’s more than willing to share. Tonight he is really willing to share and most of it without my prompting. I dismiss myself from his voicemail happy I’ve left the message and go about my day; cooking, cleaning, getting ready for tomorrow, and reading about Steve jobs. My comment a few months earlier that I will be useless after talking to my engineer always brings a chuckle from the man who has been watching trains as long as Glenn has been running them. The man who watches the trains and the engineers sometimes both tell me the same story, adding credibility to both of them, and tonight really is no exception. However at 8:45, installed in front of my computer after doing a variety of things, laundry, dishes, whatever, I find myself finally doing the thing I’ve wanted to do all day, read about Apple Computer’s cofounder since his death on October 5 struck a cord with me in an unexpected way. My phone rests next to the laptop and a conversation with my number one engineer is the furthest thing from my mind, something which is unusual in itself because whenever I leave a message I’m pretty much hopeless till I get to talk to him. This is why I try to have everything done before I call him. If he does have time to talk to me I want to be fully available. Sitting here now, my phone rings. Who would be calling me? It’s almost 9:00. maybe Gary my other friend is calling me? I pick up my phone, the hiss of a blue tooth announces that someone is definitely driving. “hello,” I say tentatively into my black Samsung Haven to whomever might be listening. “Hey,” a voice pipes up, friendly enough, perhaps just as tentative as if to say what, you don’t recognize me? My phone talks to me and I’m sure it announced the name I just didn’t hear it. I’m still grasping at straws. I resort to the phrase that always gets some kind of response. “What’s up?” I learned it from glenn. It fits every situation and always steers a conversation in some kind of direction. “Just another day in paradise, right?” Suddenly I’m laughing! It’s Glenn! It’s my number one engineer, using that signal calling voice, the hiss of the blue tooth means he’s on his way to Lancaster. He’s a very busy man, racing cars with his son, doing whatever a man like him does on two days off from running four trains a day through police activity, mechanical issues, passenger boarding issues, delayed turns, late train meets, signal or track maintenance, just, as he puts it, another day in paradise; maybe his paradise. I sit back in my chair away from my lap top, just, after two years and three weeks of knowing this man, laughing. “How are you?” I always feel when I talk to him as if we’ve picked up where we left off; or maybe I’m the one who picks up where I leave off. He has so much information and he’s always happy to share it. He says his wife lets him get away with it. Its fine with me. I’ll take it. It’s perfect. It’s my romance with the rails embodied, says a writer friend of mine. No. It’s Glenn. It’s just pure Glenn, that’s all. “Okay,” I think he says, the word is lost in the hiss of the blue tooth. My pet peeve glen’s blue tooth. Here I am finally connecting with a primary source and he has to use that damned blue tooth! It’s the worse thing anyone has ever marketed to the human race, and to think they’ve made laws that require we use them, makes me more inclined not to use a cell phone in a situation where I have to use a hands free set. I’ll stick to the wires, thanks. But Glenn has other things to do with his hands than hold phones, so I’ll just have to live with it. He’s worth it. Keeps me on my toes. “Are you on your way to Lancaster?” I ask, needlessly. Of course he is. The last time I talked to him when he was on his way to Lancaster was the day he told me I knew more about the railroad than most people. I guess I do and sometimes when I ask him a question I’m surprised because now, after two years and three weeks, I finally know the answers, or at least some of them. “Yep,” he draws out in his classic Glenn way; he never says anything normally. He’s very expressive from the time he says “hello” half asleep on New Year’s day 2010, or “I’ll have to call you back”, or “How old are you gonad be? 28”?” Now he just sits there, driving and says “yeah.” The conversation tonight is a rambling affair, and I’m not even sure I remember the next subject that comes up, I only know I’m not nervous, Pearl the cat who usually sits in on my conversations is nowhere in sight, the article on Steve Jobs is forgotten, and I’m here, hundreds of miles from the first engineer that wouldn’t talk to me the first time I stood under his window, but after a month of persistence and Janice the railfan ringleader’s social butterfly wife showed me where he was in the cab, decided I wasn’t going away. I’ve learned so much from him about not making issues of things and just taking people as they are. I’m sure he’s not perfect but in my eyes he is. Oh yeah and I’ve learned a lot about trains from him, too. Now I sigh dramatically into the phone. “Busy eh?” “Super busy. But it’s paying the bills.” “How long have you been with Disney?” “Five years. And tomorrow I’m going to go in and complain about my manager.” “There you go,” approves my engineer. His name is on a document filed by the BLET complaining about cameras in the cabs after Chatsworth. He knows a little bit about complaining. “I saw your name on that document,” I tell him tonight. A year and a half ago he told me his name was on it, and then I found the document online a few months ago. So far, I hadn’t had a chance to ask hima bout it. “”Why did you put your name on the document? I now ask him tonight. I don’t think, and I don’t’ tell him this, that the document was very well written or didn’t really seem to support its claim, but I’ll have to read it again. “They needed someone’s name on it so they came and asked me if I’d put my name on it.” How did I get so lucky as to meet Glenn, the number one engineer in the whole Metrolink system? It was no accident for me ending up on train 608 out of Los Angeles on that September 11, 2009, a year after the Chatsworth accident, the catalyst that eventually leads to tonight’s conversation. What a journey it has been and I’m sure it’s not over yet. I didn’t know, after sitting on the platform and on the planters, on the patio observing the railfan conversations that I was going to meet the engineer of my dreams. He doesn’t really strike me as very political; he’s very down to earth, friendly, very open, it seems, a little moody sometimes, my kind of guy, I guess, independent, and patient. I’ll tell you I wouldn’t want to deal with half the stuff he does, but then maybe that’s why I admire him so much. He even has the courage to admit his own flaws, it seems. I’ll take him. Now I take him on a rambling journey through my own railroad curiosity. It all starts with a strike. I don’t’ even know how the subject of the threatening railroad strike arose, but suddenly there it was and I find myself telling him that 97 percent of the BLET members approved astride authorization. He didn’t’ know about it and I couldn’t remember what the big complaint was. I thought it might be hours of service. “No. Probably medical.” “That’s it! That’s the big one. But I heard Metrolink was having engineers work when they weren’t supposed to, or hadn’t had the proper prescribed rest periods.” “That might be true,” he says. He didn’t have that problem. But he told me he hadn’t worked weekends in a month and not on Sunday, he said. Sometimes he works on weekends though he told me a few months back that he ran four trains a day Monday through Friday and it was enough. Since I’ve known him he’s usually worked six days. Guess five days wasn’t enough. “The engineers turned down the latest contract,” he tells me now. I havent’ read much about it, there is a contract dispute I keep getting emails about but I don’t’ know if it’s the same one. “They want to pay us twice a month,” he now says. “It’s nice getting paid once a week.” “I know. I’ve been getting paid once a week for five years.” He says something about the taxes being different. Apparenly it’s not the same each week, probably because the hours might vary according to what happens and how it affects the hours of service rules. I don’t’ always get the same pay check every week either so I can relate on that score. It turns out differently, he says. “Well, so much for my math,” I tell him, not remembering the whole hours of service issues. He sits quietly, driving, listening, waiting. He’s here wit me. Well, I didn’t want to ask you about that,” I said, “I wanted to ask about certification. How often do you have to get recertified?” HE didn’t’ know that. It depended on the railroad. What kinds of tests do you take? General code once a year, mechanical. He says Metrolink has some inept mechanics, but more about that, later. Okay, let’s confine this conversation to you, I now think. “When was the last time you took your tests?” He works for Amtrak. His certification is issued by Amtrak now that they hire Metrolink crews. So, he says, he’s ok till 2013. “Well you’ll be done by then won’t you? When I talked to you two years ago you said you had three years to go. It seems he’ll be working longer, he says. He’s 59, he says. I knew that because two years ago Mo told me his age but I never take facts like that second hand I’d rather take them from the person himself. “Mo told me how old you were,” I said, and then explain my motto. He said he was 59, but there’s that blue tooth again, interfering with my number one engineer. So could I get Glenn for three more years? Six years of Glenn? He’s the one who said it was miserable working of the railroad after Chatsworth. I think he has a dislike for politics in general and Chatsworth in particular. He says he loves trains. But tonight he doesn’t talk about trains. He talks about politics and Chatsworth. But now he talks about money. “I had trouble with my 401,” he says now, and explains he had to pay money to the IRS. I won’t go into particulars, money is a man’s private business but he sure doesn’t seem unwilling to share at least one difficulty with me. I shake my head; even those who make way more than me have troubles. I’m sure he has more of them; but we have some of the same troubles only to different degrees. “I didn’t’ do anything deliberately to rip them off,” he says about his 401k and the IRS. “Of course not.” I’m ashamed of myself a little bit because I’m secretly glad I’m not the only one dealing with the IRS. Then I tell him a bit of my own story. “So when are you going to get married?” Now this is classic Glenn, energetic, and straight out of the blue. When am I going to get married? I asp more in amazement than in anything related to the question. “Me?” I say. “why would I want to do that?” “Get yourself a man and have a couple of kids to go along with it,” he says. Sounds so old school. Maybe Glenn is just an old head; an old school guy. Is he wanting me to leave him alone? No, I don’t think so, but I must have achieved some kind of status for him to ask that, or he’s just teasing me. Mo says Glenn is a tease. Maybe. “Kids?” I project in shock. I helped my friend raise her for kids and our lives took us inseparate directions when the youngest one was about six years old. OH, he says, and we switch to the next subject. It strikes me later, however that I should tell him the story of the first proposal, the one that happened right there where I used to meet him at the five car marker at Fullerton, from someone who was interested in trains, long before I ever was. I’m sure he’d get a kick out of that story. I remember the last time he was about to ask me about kids, he sat high up in his locomotive waiting for the high ball The conductor interrupted me, coming and asking if I wanted the train. No, I didn’t’ want the train I said, I was talking to him. You can read all abut that in “Getting the Right One.” I remember this now because we’re back, full circle, he’s asking me about kids and this time I get to tell him, no, I don’t have kids. I want to interview people and I want to pay my bills. “I’m not always sure I like my job, but I’m hanging in there because I’m paying my bills. But I’ll hang in there to settle my debt. The insurance is great; the people are interesting. I want to interview people,” I say, “And I want to own a restaurant.” “Are you working on ten years?” “Sure at ten years I get my Mickey plaque. But not twenty. I cant’ see myself there twenty years, at least not doing what I’m doing. I want to own a restaurant. I think now I want to own a railroad café. A place where people can sleep and eat.” “Like a bed and breakfast?” He sounds interested. He doesn’t always return my calls, he rarely returns a text message, but when he talks to me he always makes me feel like I’m important, it’s a unique talent to have. He’s more than just a train guy, he’s a good guy, I want to be like him, but only in some ways. No way would I put up with 22 cats! But there’s no thought of cats now as I sit in my recliner and he approaches the mountains. “No. Well, maybe. But a place where railroad crews can come to eat and sleep.” I remember him telling me how he would sleep in Burbank when he ran the 608. “You’d have to move out of here for that,” he says. “It’s too crowded. A place like Nevada.” I’m listening. He’s giving me ideas. He’s not telling me I cant’ do something. Glenn has never told me I cant’ do something. He asked me once if I had to wait for Richard to get down the stairs off the train, that’s another story, but he didn’t try to help me down the stairs, a fact for which I will be eternally greatful. If it’s possible to admire him even more that did it. You can read that story in my essay called “My Happy Places.” ” “Writing your book might do that.” Does glenn really remember when I tell him things or does he just pull things out of his magic engineer’s hat? I remember leaving a voice mail last summer saying that I was writing a book and I needed more information. Really, I wanted more information for my Toastmasters speech. “So you’re writing a book!” he says with that classic Glenn flare on the Saturday I talked to him about my speech, waiting for his wife and his late dughter. I texted back: I’m always writng a book! That’s how I met him, really. I wrote a story with a locomotive engineer as a character and called him Glenn, for no good reason, as you might recall from my writings earlier. On September 11, 2009 after making a trip to Chatsworth to talk to the two Chrises, I heard the conductor say something about Glenn. The last year had seen me curious about meeting the engineers. “The only way you’re going to meet one is to go to the engine,” says the fullerton ring leader. and finally, with a name like Glenn, I couldn’t pass it up. Two weeks later I gave a note to his conductor and told him I was waiting on the platform with a yellow Trainweb bag and if he saw me there I wasn’t’ lost I was just waving to him. A month later, we were talking. And now, here we are, talking. Little did I know that this was the engineer of my dreams! eanwhile, back to the magic engineer hat, I bet he pulls information out of it with his left hand! According to Glenn, left hand operates the throttle, thus the reference to the left hand. I remember once he said, sitting up there, the sweet purring of that F-59 calling me, “Do you ever play the lotto? That might be your ticket to paradise!” Honey you’re my ticket to train paradise! So pack your bags we leave tonight! And I do get an ear full of information from this vast operator of locomotives. “Speaking of books,” I say, “I want to show you something I wrote when you used to come into Fullerton and our conversations. But I haven’t decided which one to show you yet. I look at the things I wrote and I say did I have that much energy? That sure took a lot of energy!” “Sounds good,” he says about to enter the hills somewhere. He tells me he might lose me in the mountains. Wish I was there sitting with him, driving through those mountains, partaking at the feet of Train knowledge. The guys on the platform wood just say I wanted the key to the Super 8 in Lancaster. No. Then I’d be late ffor work and Glenn wouldn’t’ like that! I still have to ask him if he really hasn’t ever missed a day. He said he hadn’t, two years ago. In any case, back in Anaheim, I prepare to lose the connection. “I was wondering,” I now say, surprisingly not nervous at all for such a request I’m about to make, silence here around me, the bluetooth hiss coming to me over the phone, the right one listening, “If I could have your picture.” I have a picture of Rob Sanchez but he wouldn’t want to know that. I’ve already decided watt I’ll do with this picture. I’ll make a table with the lantern and the switch keys and the picture I have of the Alco sitting beside my clock. An altar to the railroad? Maybe. Or I’ll just take it to work and put it on my desk. “You can have a picture,” he says now, as if this is a normal conversation. “You can send me a family picture if it makes you more comfortable,” I assure him. I’m not sure he always knows what to do with me. If he weren’t’ so friendly and so helpful I wouldn’t be so insistent but he has taken time to satiate an absolutely overwhelming desire to know things and I’ve always been interested in primary documents and primary sources, guess it’s the historian in me. I like stories and he is both: he’s a resource and a story. I’m sure I don’t ‘know the half of it. I’m sure it’s not all pretty, but it is a story and I’ll take it in three month intervals and write it all down because this is the most interesting fascination I’ve ever had. I love my trains and my engineers. It’s really the people who run the trains that are interesting. Maybe I just don’t’ get out much! But I do work with people and the most interesting and annoying thing about my job is people, so it makes sense. “No,” he says now, it doesn’t seem as if he’s bothered by my request, “I can get someone to take a picture. And not one of these Metrolink things.” I’m not sure what that’s in reference to, but I’ll take it. I’ll probably have to ask him about the picture again. I’m a patient middle-aged star struck railfan. I can wait. Our ever broadening circle of topics brings us back to the book, and it is at this point where we have the first dropped call. I wait. My phone rings. I am delighted! “I’m writing a book, too,” he says. “Are you ready?” I remember when I asked him for hisphone number, because he had asked for mine when I thought we might meet in Los Angeles for coffee. That hasnt’ worked out; I met him once out of the cab car, I’ve only had one face to face conversation with him, but since that October day in 2009 when we stood face to face on the steps, he’s given me so much more than I could have ever imagined. Now here he is, asking me the same question. I am ready; not sure what I’m going to get, but here it comes. “What do you get when you cross railfans and politicians?” This is all said through the annoying hiss of the blue tooth and so I listen, trying to decipher his words through statick. Glenn is so energetic and so not shy that sometimes I wonder how he sitsup there all day by himself with no interaction except with radios and dispatch. He must have a million friends. This one can’ guess. Or he says “What do you get when you cross railfans and politicians and give them a billion dollars? Metrolink. Ok that’s what he’s saying. Metrolink’s foibles are endless. They decided when they first started up that they would put water in the fountains but it was the same water to flush the toilet and wash your hands. After a few months they decided that was too much, so they wouldn’t do that anymore. That was the light one. The real trouble is now, the new cars, the Korean maker says to Metrolink don’t ask us to make any more cars for you. Bombardier says the same thing. And if that wasn’t enough, the bars that connect the cars, the couplers are being bypassed, the bars aren’t connecting, causing lots of damage to the cars. EMD, the maker of my favorite locomotive says we won’t sell you any more locomotives. UP, the arrogant railroad, says we won’t haul any of your new MPIs. Somehow UP doesn’t’ like Metrolink. Did you know that Metrolink is trying to take over the San Diagan, the Pacific Surfliner, he says, using both its names. No, I tell him, I haven’t had time, honey. Well, it’s a power grab. Why would they want to do that, I want to know, but don’t ask. Amtrak hires their crews. But wait ther’s more. Metrolink gave UP 23 million dollars to haul their locomotives and they gave it back. I don’t know; sounds like normal railroad politics and scandal to me, I’ll have to investigate the thing since Glenn seems especially vituperative. He’s a mild guy but when he gets worked up, or maybe it’s just all guys who get worked up. Haha what would I know about that? Yeah, I know something about guys getting worked up. I have a room mate, remember. So Glenn just goes on, he must be particularly annoyed tonight; glad its’ not with me. I don’t’ mind listening. “Well, their locomotives keep breaking down.” “Their what?” “Locomotives.” Oh, yeah, well, that’s another story! The other day, ok here we go with apersonal experience, I like this, we’re coming down solidad canyon, I think I had 887 and 885, the dynamic breaking wasn’t working and they were pushing me. Ok I know what dynamic breaking is, he says it’s like downshifting in a car, I think I know more about breaking the train though I can’t write it down which pretty much means I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m familiar with the term, anyway. Dynamic breaking, and the locomotive has its own breaking, he says. Yes, I know that. It’s called independent breaking. Well, he continues his railroad saga, I have to spot the ADA ramp and it’s raining and the two locomotives have wheel slippage and the dynamic breaking isn’t working. I had to work harder than I have had to ina long time, he says. “Doesn’t that scare you? I mean something could happen? Then someone would sue Metrolink.” Worked up about this, he suddenly seems milder. Well, he says much more quietly, It could be serious. Maybe he doesn’t understand what I’m saying. Ok, but this is the information I want. What’s it like running the trains. Apparently in the run out of Solidad canyon at sixty miles an hour, he’s working to break the train and spot the ADA ramp with restricted visibility. All the water is fogging up the mirror making an already challenged visibility more challenging. They have some inept mechanics, he says, I think his language was a little more colorful than that. “What did you do?” I asked him. “What were they supposed to do?” He wrote up a report, the engineer who took the train from him wrote a report and the next day wen he got one of those locomotives again, the problem was still there. Yeah, dave says, railroaders like to complain, but I’ll take it. That seems like kind of a serious one, I think. Then he gave me his opinion on cameras in the cab. So what are they going to do? He wants to know. Review the camera? The train is wrecked and nothing is changed. So you shouldn’t have cameras in the cabs because they don’t do any good anyway. Wonder if they ever caught that guy we saw coming throughFullerton with a Newsweek strung on a line across the front window to keep the sun out? Not sure. I seem to recall reading a story about some engineers who were fired because of what happened on camera. But I don’t know and I don’t bring them up. He just wants to complain about cameras in the cab. Metrolink, he says, doesn’ take responsibility for anything that happens. “That happened after Chatsworth,” I say now. Metrolink blamed Connex for hiring Sanchez. “I can’t stick up for that guy,” he says about that engineer. “He let the whole railroad industry down.” Yeah, I think Glenn just wants to vent tonight. I’m all ears. “I had a personal friend killed on that train,” he says. “I know you told me. What was his name? I have the whole list.” “I have his name right here,” he says, and tells me the name. He was getting a divorce and I took his side. But that’s a story I’ll have to tell you next time.” This is a clear indication to me that the conversation is ended. His battery is low now and so I must relinquish my number one engineer to the trappings of technology. It is technology that is allowing this conversation and just like any others we’ve had before, I’ll take it. “I shouldn’t be like that,” says the number one engineer, his phone fading. It’s the third time we’ve dropped a call, and now the conversation is just about over. “It’s okay,” I comfort with my curiosity only partly satiated and my sensibilities over stimulated as usual after a conversation with Glenn the number one Metrolink engineer. “I want your perspective. You’re out in the field,” I continue knowing I’m racing against time. His battery is about to die and I need to get to bed. Its Sunday night October 8 an I’m sitting in my recliner, or walking the floor, turning water on in the kitchen, just taking it all in, listening, my black phone resting in my left hand connecting me to the man I haven’t talked to in three months. “You should get both sides,” he says, quiet, the energy gone, or at least that spurt of it disappeared. He doesn’t’ sound sad, he just sounds like he’s out of energy. “I get both sides,” I say, “It’s ok. I appreciate it.” Dave Norris the forty year veteran of train watching whose grandfather worked for the railroad he says tells me that railroaders love to complain. Maybe. But I’m all for Glenn’s complaining. He’s the only man I’ll let complain to me. He’s not accountable to me. I’m not his wife, I’m not his daughter, I don’t’ have to wake up with him in the morning, at least not in the same place. In fact lately I think I have to wake up earlier than he does and probably get home around the Same time as he does, only his weekday home is a motel in Lancaster and mine is a two bedroom apartment in Anaheim with two cats and a room mate. I don’t’ know what Glenn comes home to; on the weekends maybe two birds, six dogs and 22 cats, three adult children, a wife, and a two hour commute each way to run his Metrolink trains on the Antelope Valley Line. If he wants to complain to me it’s really quite ok. I live for it. It gives me information about the railroad from the engineer’s perspective, not the railfan on the platform snapping pictures of the same car for the hundredth time. It’s the perspective of the man who pulls or pushes those cars, what he thinks, and now he’s apologizing. “Well, I’ll have to get back to you, Shelley,” he says, he rarely uses my name, perhaps in vain when he gets some random text message from me in his motel in Lancaster or the break room at Taylor where the Metrolink locomotives are housed, a former switching yard of some note now turned into the gathering place for metro link’s five county operators. Maybe he’s in the living room of one of his houses wherever they are in the high desert country. I have only been told where he lives and not by him; I’ll find that out from him. Tonight it’s about complaints, money, marriage, a little bit about the railroad, Disney, a restaurant in the seed time of making. It’s about life. It’s about an hour of dropped calls and call backs, it’s my romance with the rails, the blue tooth, me not being nervous. It’s about the engineer story. It’s about sweet engineer dreams and Metrolink nightmares. Okay,” I say knowing our singularly relaxing conversation is ended. “You have a good week.” “You, too,” he says, quiet. This is different. Usually it’s “have a good day” or “have a good night” this time it’s “You, too.” I will. I’ll wait with bated breath to hear all the stories we didn’t get to tonight. He really is the engineer of my dreams. Tonight, Sunday October 8, is my dream come true? My engineer’s annoyance with the railroad is my pleasure? This is what I wanted. I wanted the story. Tonight it was all about sweet engineer dreams and Metrolink nightmares.
Copyright © 2011 Shelley J Alongi |