Storymania - She Likes Trains: One Hand Somewhere Else by Shelley J Alongi

She Likes Trains: One Hand Somewhere Else
Shelley J Alongi

Cooperative freights and weather, the smiling engineer, Taco Bell, a full heart, a helpful passenger that takes the cake, one hand waving, and one hand somewhere else.

I suppose I have the best opportunity to make friends. I have so many people come up and ask me if I need help whether I’m at the train station or somewhere else. Those who don’t ask get the idea right away, beating a hasty retreat to the dark nether regions, of Anaheim where they came from, but there is the occasional brave soul who just insists and luckily for me and them has not ended up in a million pieces on the railroad tracks. In my older years I’ve decided that I’m the one who is sticking up for me and if I don’t want assistance I’ve got no qualms about making sure that person understands that. Usually I’ve taken a different approach lately. Walking toward the Spaghetti Factory on Monday for the southern California rail travel meeting, between the railroad tracks and the planter a man approaches, not a native born man, I always notice I have the most difficulty with anyone who clearly wasn’t born here, but that doesn’t deny the chance for equal opportunity, especially on Friday.

On Monday, however, in danger of being assisted, I continue walking toward the ramp that signals we’re at the place where the first car stops for Metrolink trains. Here is where you make the turn that brings you past the restaurant and then out into the parking lot where you can locate Noelwood, The Slide Bar, or Stubricks Steak house.

“Ma’m?”

I recognize the signs of impending danger.

“Can I help you?” I ask. This time, I’m going to guide this conversation around its own kind of y and turn this train in the right direction.
He makes some comment about the tracks or something, honestly I don’t remember what it was now. Jim, the man with the pacemaker who taught school for 35 years later on in the week, an older man, 75 years old, he tells me, insists I have a photographic memory. I do remember conversations verbatim but this one escapes me.

“You better be careful,” I admonish the likely assister, “you don’t want to end up on the tracks.”

The man takes his cue and gets the heck out of dodge, leaving me in peace. I make my way across the parking lot and locate, this time asking for some help, the Nollwood restaurant. I don’t’ think I’ll need help locating that restaurant in the future, but I sure don’t need help locating the tracks.

I make my way toward Noelwood, meeting the small group that congregates there every fourth Monday of the month. Chris is there, the Orange Blossom special, Ken, Kathy who will man a booth for the Depot Inn and Suites on May 7, national train day. On may 7 I will be at the museum at a harvy Girls meeting so I won’t make it to Los Angeles for the train day. Steve approaches me.

“Let’s put this off till after national train days,” he suggests. I’ve asked him about publishing a link to my train writings on his web site. He has already answered this in an email but I reaffirm the positive answer. It’s fine, we can wait. Steve disappears into his corner in grave conversation with bob and another man whom I do not recognize. The conversation at this table with Chris, Robin, Kathy, another Chris who is new tonight, a woman whose name I don’t catch, and Ken, the Orange Blossom special is sufficient for entertainment tonight. Chris talks about an engineer on his way into Irvine who suddenly feels the need to go down into the nose and hands over the controls to Chris, the million mile man. Did he fabricate the emergency I want to know later. No, Chris insists, in all the time he knew Jim the engineer he never pulled something like that; it must have been legitimate. This was in the days when cab rides were not so strictly monitored. The conductor the next day asks who was stopping the train, it was so nice. Returning from his emergency the engineer tells Chris he wants to see him stop the train. The conductor notices the difference, and the rest, as they say, is history.

“You better keep your hunch,” says Chris to the conductor when he informs Chris he might have been stopping the train. This is probably one of those stories one should not publish but that everyone knows happens. It’s just dangerous when someone is trying to text and run the train at the same time. Not, on any good day, or any railroad, a good idea.

I’m very curious tonight about the food. I haven’t eaten at this place since the corporate took over the running of the restaurant when it went bankrupt last year. The atmosphere has changed since then. The staff does not blow a train whistle to signify the completion of an order. The group is smaller, and the manager is not always coming over to ask if everything is okay, or providing chocolate chip cookies. This staff stays quiet and so I order my hamburger with French fries and a diet soda. Over this repast, the fries passing my own thickness and doneness test, I become the subject of conversation. The fries are not too crispy, not too soft. They are, paired with the hamburger which is pretty good, just right.

“I’ve got engineers yelling at me. Down here. Over here,” I say. Seems like they all like a talking to once in a while. I’m glad to oblige.

“You are one of a kind,” Robin says.

“Well I started this all on the Fullerton station platform, one hand waving and one hand somewhere else!”

I stop a minute, contemplating my cup, one of those cardboard things meant for cold drinks, its usual straw and lid adorning the top, amused by my own words. I’m not sure what I mean by one hand somewhere else but I am sure it will provide fodder for the teasing cannons for years to come. Where was that hand anyway? One was waving and one was somewhere else. One hand for sure, the right one, has been working on improving muscle strength in the shoulder, it is getting better slowly. It must get better, it’s my engineer waving hand, the one, I guess, that isn’t somewhere else. Where could that hand be, you ask? I have no idea! Perhaps in a bag, holding a cup, holding a phone, texting with my waving hand, operating the throttle like Glenn says with the left hand. Could it be there? Somewhere else? Holding a switch key? Don’t show the engineer your switch key, I tell the group and have to explain how everyone asked me if I showed the new 608 engineer the switch key after Glenn went to Lancaster.

“I can take them off if you want to see them,” I tell Robin, who admires the keys from a distance. Today they are mixed in with the bell and the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific logos.

“I can see them just fine,” he says as I finger them. Good, just don’t show them to the engineer. Never show your engineer the switch key!

And there’s something else, too. Chris wants to explain how the y works. Once you get the concept, Robin says, you’ll understand completely. Funny, but I think I did finally get it, somewhere between Monday and Friday. The y connects two tracks, like a switch track, in the shape of a y, of course. The legs of the y can extend for miles, so running the train around one leg and then running it across the bottom turns it in the other direction. It’s so simple a child can get it; maybe that’s why trains aren’t so complicated. The thing that’s complicated about trains, I think, is the people who run them. Rob Sanchez said running a passenger train was easy. If it’s so easy, why is he dead? Because he forgot that even if it is easy, you still need to pay attention to what you’re doing.

Chris draws his y and we go on from there, talking about possible future cuts to service on Amtrak 799, the train that escorts the Overland Trail to Santa Barbara for its wine tasting, politics, whether or not the train will run to Tehachapi this year.

The group splits up about 6:45, on its way, some to take Metrolink, some to take Amtrak number 4 to Chicago. I drip off a bag of ham to Bob and Janice and make my way to see bobby on 608. Yes, I’ve made a ham on Firday before Easter, and just before I walk out the door for work Monday I take a bag of it and bring it to Bob the ring leader, the one who ended up at my house last Easter for dinner with Janice, his wife. He said he would eat ham if I made it. He really enjoyed that ham, so since their daughter visited them on Easter and I was playing organ for the Easter choir and eating Filipino food, I couldn’t make an Easter dinner this year. He got, it seems, two portions of ham. And if you’re wondering, I don’t’ like honey glaze, so it wasn’t covered in the sticky gooey stuff; it was flavored with pineapple and mustard and quite tasty. On Friday Janice tells me she’ll make beans with it here, soon. Glad I could provide such excitement! I’ll have to do that, too. Maybe it will be my first meal provided for the train station guys on Tuesday night? We shall see. I still need to call and set up my participation in the feed by the railroad tracks. All my loves in one place, trains, music, and food…but not engineers. Well, they’re here, just sitting up there calling me to them, asking me how my arm is doing, laughing when I explain to bobby that some people missed the train while we were talking, and taking vacation days.

“You take a lot of those,” I tell Cary now on Friday, standing at his train after returning from Taco Bell with my four burritos, taco, and tostada. He laughs a rich basy laugh with a slight bark, it’s a Cary kind of laugh. He does take a lot of vacation days.

“You’ve been at this so long you deserve it,” I tell him, as the wind cools my back and the hustle of passengers catching their trains goes on around the Fullerton Engineer girl and the stationary train. Cary’s conductor gives him the highball and I step back, helping my arm assume its waving position.

“Take care of your arm,” Cary says twice to me, just before ringing that bell. He is a kind thoughtful man. Where is the self serving engineer that everyone says is up there”? The younger introvert? Well, he’s out there somewhere, but tonight, Cary the old timer, who started his train running career with Southern pacific is here. The man I almost dismissed last year from my engineer schedule because he always seems distracted, is the one who thinks about my well being. Nice guy, sweet engineer.

On Monday he asks me what the word is.

“It’s good!” I project. “Where is your friend?” he doesn’t know where the nicely dressed black lady who meets him is today. Usually she’ll take an earlier train. She and the engineer have been talking for over a year, she has his number. I don’t have his number, but I have my number one engineer. A man, Dave insists, if he didn’t have cats, dogs, and a dragster to feed would probably have retired a long time ago.

“Well he pays his phone bill,” I say. We know that much.

“Amtrak has nothing on you,” I tell Glenn this week, “running trains 40 years. You were around before they were. One year before.” I haven’t said anything Glenn doesn’t already know. I took the words out of his mouth and put them back again. A year ago when the engineer stealer, that would be francis the black Labrador Chris’s guide dog, and Chris my work colleague, stood on the platform, Glenn said that he was around before Amtrak was. He’s still here, and so is Amtrak.

Amtrak is all excited this week about their 40th anniversary. They keep imploring me to go to their web site, ride this train or that train. I haven’t had much time to go investigate what Amtrak is up to for its 40th year anniversary. I’ve been chasing my own trains and now I locate the marker successfully, using the bell for my guide, and standing right under his window.

“Are you ready for Friday?” I ask Bobby on Monday, not sure why that subject comes up.

“Of course” he says.

“You sound like Glenn.” I stand here at a respectful distance, touching the locomotive, smiling.

Bobby’s tenor laugh echoes from the cab, I bet his smile is priceless! He knows which glen I mean. Tonight both Glenn and bobby comfort my trains into compliance, Cary having most likely completed his run and heading home to his place of refreshment, just as all my other engineers will do tonight. The high ball signals the end of my conversation with 608’s engineer and I’m off to meet a new one!

Cooperative weather, trains that run on time, tonight can be no better than it is. Freights with their tanker and flat cars, stenciled numbers, graffiti, dirt streaks and hidden manifests, some of those cars shiny and brand new, old veterans of the railroad just like the men who guide them pass us, slaking the thirst for railroad equipment, providing an assortment of bells, faces, and notes on locomotive numbers, car types, colors and times for those who write them down. One such freight whose numbered locomotives remain unknown to me pulls onto track 2, getting a red light, waiting patiently for its turn. I stand across from it, helping my arm to wave greeting to its engineer, hoping he won’t stop that bell just yet.

He’s smiling at you!” Curt tells me, sliding to a stop on the pathway, his bike making its familiar way along the path we all know so well.

“She knows a lot about trains,” he says, engaging the engineer.

“Be careful,” says the smiling engineer, an energetic fifties man sitting up there, hanging out his window, watching as another train’s lights warn us of eminent approach. “There’s another freight coming!”

He thinks I’m standing too near the tracks. He may be right. The air displacement can be forceful at times, it’s always wise to remain a good distance away, especially when the freight comes through at speeds only guessed at. My response to this warning I’ve received a hundred times, is much different than that experienced by me from the casual observer. The engineer knows what he’s doing. He’s a credible source, I’ll take his advice.

“What’s your name?” I want to know.

“Randy,” he answers, another name for my book. We step back as the train approaches, Randy waits for it to pass. He closes his window, the skipper of this train, energetic, sandy-haired engineer, kind of looks like the skipper on Gilligan’s Island, curt says, and returns to comfort his locomotive into compliance, assured that the girl won’t be sucked in by the hell bent and Barstow bound freight, though this one is most likely headed for the harbor. It is Randy who is most likely headed for Barstow. I don’t ask him. By the timed he gets his green light, I’m in the depot, taking care of business, dropping by the Santa Fe Cafe for an assortment of diet sodas. Anna, Jose’s wife, is there tonight. She’s been there since 5:00, someone tells me. Jose went home sick and who knows where Wendy is. Perhaps she called out for some unknown reason? Don’t know All I know is that I met another engineer, I got diet soda and hey I didn’t even yell at the engineer for being concerned about my safety. It’s an emotional thing, really. Someday, get these guys out of the cab, I’ll explain everything to them.

The music at the Santa Fe café has changed a little, not sure if it’s the station or the artists, but I notice the difference if I don’t remember the lyrics as I spend time here this week, buying sodas, sitting outside with Bob and Janice, Dan, Dave who looks at the way I have the brass arranged this week, two more bells, the metal clasps gone, only held on the lanyard by the small rings hooked through the nibs on the lanyard itself. Brass keys hang from rings, bells are attached directly to the string sides of the lanyard, silver bells hang from their safety pins, it all compliments the warm weather, the trains running on time, the freights visiting the station. Norm is retiring in July, says Janice, there goes another good railroad engineer. His wife is so grouchy, he says, she’s in pain and sometimes, Janice thinks, he comes down just to get away. I don’t’ see him on the Saturday I talk to Jim waiting for his son on the Pacific Surf Liner. Kimberly makes her way down on Saturday, dropping e off for a rare weekend visit since we were in town for lunch with her parents at The Hungry Bear, a Fullerton favorite. The Santa Fe depot was built here in Fullerton in 1930, perhaps when my great grandfather plied his own kind of magic on the rails. Richard, a man I haven’t’ seen here in over a ear, a man I know from Toastmasters shows up on Thursday, Curt says the new Metrolink cars have been here, resting on flat freight cars, barely clearing the bottom of the bridge which spans the tracks, my bridge to paradise. Marty, Bruce’s friend, shows up, takes a trip to L.A. though Bruce isn’t here this week. Shirley waits for her train, thee professional panhandler, a woman with red hair, plies the station looking for a handout. Valerie returns from the hospital with a new kidney, she says. Maybe yes, maybe no. It is the train station and anything can happen here, and does. A man’s phone dies, his ride leaves him, forcing him on the last train to Union Station which comes at 10:30 at night. Tom the cigar smoking guy returns from his vacation to Yosemite, Yo SemIte, as Curt says he used to pronounce it.

It all leads to my last trip to the station of the week, Thursday night, where the helpful incident that takes the cake, occurs.

“895?” I ask
bobby when he comes in here with the squeaky MPI. All week we’ve seen my despised MPIS, the bells sounding their bitter prerecorded calls, their attempts to be a bell falling on unreceptive ears, their grill plating luring me, though to their sides, one hand waving and one hand somewhere else. Tonight one hand holds my white cane. My heart is full. Work hasn’t’ been too bad this week. Music has entered my life again through the reestablishment of an old connection, I am thinking of getting involved, finally, in the feed by the railroad tracks on Tuesdays, I know three very nice engineers who take time to communicate with me. I am working on a new Brett McCarley story, getting plans together to finish my Glen Streicher story Saturday I will go to the Orange empire Railway museum and hang out in the locomotive. “Hi! I am climbing into the OERRM 1943 diesel loco this Saturday. Wish the engineer luck. I think it’s sd45,” I tell Glenn on Tuesday. I’ve been trying to get information on it but I’m sure I’ll find more information than I need tomorrow. If not I’ll just go into research mode. There are diet sodas in my bag, I still have a bus pass, we’re on our way to making amends with the property management company where I was forced to break the lease last year. It is with all the blessings I could imagine filling my heart that I stand at this engine tonight. So many times I’ve stood here at 608’s locomotive with so many things on my mind. One time I toll Glenn I was stressed about money.

“You’re doing alright,” he says kindly. He’s a good man. And he’s right. It is here where I first make contact with him, where I first come after my injury recedes, and now here I am tonight, again, the Stock Broker engineer looking out his window.

“How are the girls?” I ask.

“Okay.”

It is then that I tell him about the people missing the train on Monday because they were talking to me, watching me talking to him.

“No!” he ejects into the cool, calm air, the clatter of that MPI forcing over stated vocal projections.

“Is this the train to Ocean Side?” I say, shaking my head in disbelief. The laugh that proceeds from that cab is a truly amused man’s response to people being so distracted that they miss their train. He can’t believe it’s happened. Yes, my stock broker engineer, it has happened!

Getting thee highball he pulls the train away. I turn to make my way back to the bridge.

“Ma’m, do you need help?”

Okay, here we go again. The train clatters past us.

“Are you trying to get on the train?”

What? The engine is noisy, the train only feet from us, it is moving. I don’t believe this guy.

“If I were trying to get on the train I’d be on it!” I yell over its noise, uncaring at this point. “Stupid! I can’t believe how stupid that was!”

“You can’t spell stupid without U.P. someone tells me earlier, joking about the letters in the Union Pacific railroad.

I am flabbergasted. I am uninterested in making a good impression at this time. That question is so far fetched, so ridiculous, I can’t even believe he asks it.

“Oh, well, I was just getting ready to jump on the train. Do you want to jump with me?” is Curt’s response later.

This one, in my opinion, takes the cake! Why would someone ask if someone else was trying to get on a moving train. He’s probably the next guy who’ll step in front of it! Don’t’ defend him, it was just ridiculous. Like I said, it takes the cake!

The rest of the night passes quietly, freights getting their indications to switch to track 2. Red turns to green, green to yellow, and it is again another great night to be between engineers.

Yes, I started all this on the Fullerton station platform a year ago, Cooperative freights and weather, the smiling engineer, Taco Bell, a full heart, a helpful passenger that takes the cake, one hand waving and one hand somewhere else!