Metrolink111: I'd Rather Have The Serving Dish “I got married in July of 67,” says Walter, the rail fan who has released a constant barrage of words it seems since 6:00 pm this Wednesday November 19. Sitting out on the patio of the Santa Fe Café at the Fullerton train station is Walter, David, Bob, Doug, a new name, and me. Larry isn’t here tonight. David tells me all about the airport accident, in 2004, and of course he doesn’t have to tell me about it because I know all about it. You can read my thoughts about it on this web site. Tonight I’m a little bit annoyed at the man talking for hours and hours, only interrupted by others, the only way it seems to get him to stop talking is to talk. Bob gets up and talks to someone else for a while, clearly annoyed. Before Walter starts his conversation, something I may have inadvertently started by saying “hello it’s the bike guy” he says “no I’ve got my car out there” Bob an David have a rousing discussion about the bail-out and should American automakers be bailed out, what are they going to spend the money on, and why are we in Iraq and all kinds of other things that old men who have time on their hands talk about. It’s the equivalent of the Starbucks coffee house without the good coffee, without so many people there, and the frequent interruption of the freights singing their glorious tune right through your conversation and me flirting with the engineer, well, something like that, if only in my head. Walter does stop talking, but not for long. And he sometimes is in his own world, he doesn’t seem to change subjects easily. At 8:00 when Jose pulls the last chair off the patio and we all disband to the tracks, Walter comes out and sits by me and talks, of course. This is the man I mentioned in last week’s recounting, the one who talks constantly. I do mind it, when I go to the tracks I like to sit and just think, or do nothing. I don’t generally want people talking to me, and so sometimes I tune him out and sometimes I listen. He talks about being married to his wife who ends up in a psych ward, he talks about his nephew who maxes out his credit card, he says he has three kids, he finally did it took a while he says because of some physical problems with her, and he talks about owning his auto shop. There’s a lot I don’t get tonight because I’m thinking of nothing, I’m relaxing after my work week, and I’m enjoying a double cheese bacon burger that must weigh three pounds. Kristina, who is the daughter of the owner, says that they own the café, they do not have a lease to pay to the city. No one can remember just how long the café has been there, it has been there a long time, I’m assured. We talk about the high priced airport food, and I say that the food here, even if I’ve got the beginnings of a cold, tastes better than the airport restaurant’s food. The fries are a little burnt this time, but all and all it’s very good, especially the big pieces of bacon and the huge hamburger patties. Now, where’s the tomato? I don’t see any, I’ll have to ask for it next time. It’s a good dinner and I’d have it again. True to my word, I don’t use the catsup on the fries because I’m still of the opinion that the catsup is too sweet. I’d rather have fries without catsup than catsup that’s too sweet. All this is washed down of course by the mandatory diet Pepsi and then followed later at the tracks by an ice-cream sandwich. I have developed a new ritual it seems, eating ice-cream by the railroad tracks. During our conversation on the patio I explain that I work for Disney and that I type transcripts for CSUF. I ask Bob who is talking on the scanner, on the radio, of course it’s the train conductor and engineer and dispatcher but to my untrained ear it’s hard to tell who is who. I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually, just like I figured out who Joe Hartzler was by listening to the audio recordings of the Chatham Ball school board meetings. What a nice pain that guy is! Back to the rail fans, I tell Bob that the next time I get on the Metrolink I’m going to sit behind the engineer. For some reason he finds that amusing. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s because last week I asked him how to meet one. “You can’t sit behind the engineer,” he says. “He sits in that cubby hole.” “No, not in the cab,” I explain, “I mean in the car behind the engineer.” Interesting in the Metrolink crash apparently there was one man who was killed who never sat behind the engineer after the last metrolink crash he was involved with, and the day he sat in the first car, the train crashed. Apparently some people are afraid to sit in the first car. I’m not. I’m not afraid to sit in the first car. I’ve made peace with my maker, it’s okay. If the engineer misses a light, or some other engineer misses a light, or something else happens, I’ll be where the action is even if I’m part of it. Then people can say “Shelley had this thing about sitting behind the engineer” and they’ll publish it in the paper along with pictures of Pearl and Brandy. Someone at the station will say “Shelley was always talking about the engineer” and someone else somewhere will say “Shelley got interested in the Metrolink engineer in the Chatsworth crash” and then they’ll start to analyze it and then they’ll come in here and see the pictures I have of him, which hopefully, if I ever get time, or energy, or both, or go shopping, or something, I’ll get a picture frame for and hang up on the wall here in front of the computer. Someone will just shove pictures in a box somewhere and his picture will end up with all of my other pictures, in someone’s closet, then you could say he went back in the closet. Hiding in the closet with Brandy! (: In case anyone wonders yes I do know that Rob was gay and yes sometimes my inferences are a little irreverent, but not my sadness, and not my dismay at his loss. I just can’t help imagining that he knew in the final moment that this was a horrible accident. That is enough for me to have sympathy for him. In our current political climate someone will accuse me of being a gay basher and my response to that is no I’m not, it’s just sad because it’s not supposed to be that way, sometimes there are so many other things that lead people to desire their own sex. I separate the person from the attraction though some would say that’s denying part of who he was. No, I don’t deny it, I hope there was reconciliation with him and God, not anyone else. I’m sad for more than the accident, I’m saddened to think there could have been no reconciliation with God. Tonight on the patio I’m sure the rail fans don’t know that. It’s fine. I ask other questions like how many engines were pulling that freight and how many cars. Four engines, Bob says, and he doesn’t know how many cars there were, he didn’t count them. It doesn’t matter, there were a lot of them and there always are. I can buy a scanner at Radio Shack for fifty bucks he says if I want to hear the conversations with the train engineers and conductors. You know I might just do that, but it’s on the long list of things to do later, not now. Right now it’s all about renewing creative drive and hanging out with rail fans, I don’t even do that at my job. By the way tonight I learn that Anna is Jose’s wife. So this whole café thing and the people who sit on the patio go back a long way and I still have more to learn. “Where’s your friend the conductor?” I ask Bob as the Southwest chief pulls into the station. His name is Buck and bob gets up to look for him. He tells me that conductors bid for routes and after thirty-three years you can pretty much get what you want. I think that Rob was worried about losing his route, too, I’m not sure if his friend told me that or if I read it in the paper. It’s a concern shared by many others, probably you included. It’s certainly something I deal with in the scheduling department. So I’m familiar with the seniority game. We go out to the tracks and sit there, walking past the cement light poles that give light to the area, feeling the cool fall breeze against my light fleece jacket. It occurs to me that there are so many nice evenings in our year here, during the fall and the summer that I have finally discovered a place I can go and read and enjoy the evening and learn. Instead of regretting all the evenings I haven’t spent outdoors, I’m finding a new place to spend my evenings, thereby allowing Pearl and Brandy more access to the apartment which they know they own even if they don’t pay the bills. They’re great roommates! Walters strolls up and says “I’ll pester you” and begins his monologue, parts of which, this time, are informative, and bring me to remember Rob the Metrolink engineer. He talks about the packing house that used to be here, that they would load three boxcars at a time and then push them down and then a steam engine would move them all away at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. We watch two teenagers walk down the tracks over by the Spaghetti Factory. Where the Spaghetti Factory is now was a loading ramp for the packing house, he says, and they used to play on the tracks. He tells me that a few days ago a three year-old girl was looking through the fence on the walkway between the tracks, and they had to get her attention to get her to come off the tracks. The light was green, he said, but luckily there were no trains. The faith of a child or the inattention of a parent, I don’t know; maybe a little bit of both. You can have the tracks, I think. The only time I want to be on them is when I’m on a train. Then if I get hit by a train it’s not my fault! As I have to do most times, I mention the Chatsworth crash though I can’t remember what it was I said about it . “OH I missed out on that,” he says, and I think oh dear here we go! He tells me that he saw a priest who was interviewed about giving the last rights to the engineer who, he said, was “cut in two.” “Cut in two? Poor Rob,” I say under my breath and I’m not being dramatic, it’s how I reacted. I don’t like that picture. Especially now that I know something about Rob if only in a cursory way. I know what I’ve read and what I’ve been told, most of it favorable. The thing that got me, though, was that when Walter said that, I thought of Rob bringing a present to his friend, a serving dish, to someone who is decidedly not a fan of cooking. If I make a single small connection like that, knowing how someone died with what they brought someone as a present, it makes the whole accident even more unpalatable. I asked for it, I suppose, so I’ll stand up and take it but it’s not a pretty picture, and it’s definitely not something I want to think about for very long. It can bring me to tears. Given the source of the information, however, I was not sure whether or not to believe it because of some logistical questions, for instance, a fire in the locomotive? Or near it? But then I went and looked it up before I even wrote it in this recounting because I wanted to see if any other sources corroborated the story. Somehow I had missed that one. Apparently Donald Ashman an Anglican priest did give last rights to many of the deceased, I knew that, but as it turns out he did bless Rob’s remains, stating that he was only partially exposed, the rest of him being under the engine. Somehow that made me think of walking between two trains at Union Station, and it made me think of Rob ordering the roast beef sandwich, and giving his friend the serving dish. I had wondered how they found him on that afternoon but honestly I’m not really sure I wanted the answer. There had to be a lot of blood in that cab as well as anywhere else. As one person not at the train station who is fond of Amtrak’s Coast Starlight told me back in September “It was bad.” I’m glad I couldn’t see those pictures. The priest was on the phone with his wife, apparently, and was injured, but did his duty for probably two hours when I count up his recollections and his own understanding of the time frame. Don’t remind me self righteously that Rob was text messaging, I already know that, that’s like knowing the sky is blue or the sun is yellow, or grass is green. Don’t lecture me on how it’s against Metrolink policy to use a cell phone in a train cab, I know that, too. He knew it. Everyone knows it. He who is without sin, I say, let him cast the first stone. Another Amtrak train pulls up heading for Los Angeles or San Diego, I don’t remember now. We watch a man in blue jeans and an Amtrak shirt and cap holding a radio stand at the door. “new uniforms?” Walter asks. I figure not, because uniforms aren’t that casual. “No,” he says. “I’m just a rail fan.” And that’s what I am now, thanks to a Metrolink engineer who grabbed my attention. Bring me a serving dish, I’d much rather have the serving dish than to think of Rob being crushed under the engine. At 9:00 pm, feeling a little under the weather and also realizing my cell phone battery is almost gone I call a cab and go home early. I get here at 9:30, greeted by two cats who want their treats, and haunted by a ghostly image of an engineer under an engine, and a curiosity about railroad switches. I’m intensely curious about railroad switches, now that I think about it that’s what brought up the Chatsworth crash. I explained to Walter that the engineer broke a switch and that starts the forty-five minute detailed discussion of Rob being under the engine. I still don’t’ know about switches, though. That is the discussion and the questions I’ll have to save for next time.
Copyright © 2008 Shelley J Alongi |