She Likes Trains: Railroad Groupy A completely surprise trip to Fullerton, four engineers, one conductor, a teasing fest, and trains. The Fullerton engineer girl has turned into a railroad groupy. It doesn’t get much better than that. But I bet it will! “Shelley!” the voice croons over the intercom on train 642, catching me by surprise in a personally enriching and a little embarrassing moment. It’s 8:30 Pm, Monday April 2, and we’ve just pulled into the Laguna Niguel station. This quiet trip, the quiet car for you croons the conductor as we pull out of fullerton, handing me chocolate cookies and insisting half an hour later to a work colleague on the train that I begged him for them. Oh my! This isn’t at all what I planned, and now I’m here locked behind the restroom door, looking for the flush button. He said he was going to come get me but I didn’t mean it to happen this way. Never mind! I give up. Isn’t that what the cleaning crew is for I think guiltily running water over my hands, manicured hands with wrecked nail polish and short nails that have endured the constant click and batter of typing, their usual fate. It’s always this way with me, caught somewhere with wrecked nail polish, and this time, on a train. No, it’s not the engineer who is calling me over the intercom. Does he know my name? I always wonder that, you know, and now I slide open the door, coming out into the light, hopping down the stairs onto the platform, turning left toward the locomotive. No, wait it’s right here and there’s the engineer, an old guy, the conductor insists, who cant handle my flirting. I’m not flirting with him right now, I’m looking both ways and then talking. “You’re Pat, aren’t you?” I don’t want to say, you’re the engineer because long ago I was told by a writer’s group that I use people’s professions more than their names in my writing so I’m personalizing my all consuming fascination with running the train. Funny, tonight, standing here, outside the first car, behind the engine, my favorite spot, as close as I can legally get to the engineer on the clock, the hum of the auxiliary power unit on his engine alerting me earlier that I’m about to head in the wrong direction. Funny, the engineer gave me directions two years ago about where to find my San Bernardino train, and now the conductor is looking for me, but, score! I’ve got the engineer right here, appearing like a silent stealthy cat out of the cab, about to head to the cab car for the return trip. He’s a nice enough guy. I don’t know why I’m so shy about talking to these guys, they’re polite enough, on the clock, I guess, or just in general. I’m not harassing him, wonder if Glenn thinks I am harassing him? Especially after the voice mail I left on his phone tonight? Glenn, you were in two of my dreams this week, I just had to tell you. I don’t know if I could explain them to him, but I sure give it a try. It was like a Clint Eastwood scene, but there were swords and jousting and he knocked a sword out of someone’s hand and said “You don’t want to do that!” Something else, too, not sure and you said, I explain to him, “Make it count!” The other dream? Ha, he was just talking, I don’t’ know if you were calling signals or not, isay, standing at the station, telling him that I wasn’t planning to be here and I didn’t want to compete with a train so I had limited time. But anyway, you were just talking and I said in my dream, hey I kno that guy! So take care, Glenn, I’m exhausted from working and by the time I get home I know I can’t pay attention if you tell me something important so I don’t’ call you. I have been working a lot of hours and a little stressed, and doing other things, but always wanting to call and ask him questions without the energy to hear the answers. The conductor I know says you’re working, I say, I knew that. And I hope everything is ok and we’ll talk, soon. But tonight, standing at the station, waiting for my next train meet, I bring my voicemail to a close with my customary flourish, take care, trying not to sound awe struck, though something about this first engineer just leaves me speechless, me a former division governor of Toastmasters. Never mind all that now. I disconnect, waiting for something. Now, here I am at Laguna Niguel, a spontaneous trip to the station, my only trips lately being day time forays with a book and a few hours to spare before getting home to wait for pay checks or type transcripts. Standing here with this very normal man positioned in front of me, now I’m not explaining anything, I’m walking with Pat toward the cab car, the other end of the train, and here’s Eddie, the conductor who has been harassing me since the moment I met him months ago when he and James and I went to dinner at Halizco market, a place that is closed now. Wonder if I can go to dinner with these guys some time? “I talked to James,” I say to Eddie. “My old enineer.” “Yeah. He told me what trains he’s on.” “He was sick,” says the teasing railroad gossip. “Wht happened?” “He had a cold,” Well, he does have a seven and nine year-old. They bring home everything and share so willingly! I remember! And Bobby? Well, you stay away from John, Eddie teases. “Who are you talking about?” Pat the new engineer on Shelley’s block is chiming in, walking a little ahead of us, hwo he changed positions I do not know, it must be that stealthy cat thing. Eddie tells pat boby’s last name. I’m bobby’s woman and he’s going to “whop his ass’ Eddie says, if he finds out John is flirting with me. Well, ahha, engineer cat fight for sure. “I’m not flirting with the engineers,” I insist, as we pass the ramp, slid past the railing for the ramp, head up into the car. Hey, even high school wasn’t like this, I think, and three years into my fascination with trains I’m okay with them teasing me about flirting with all these old heads. Can’t get muchbetter than that, I suppose. Just as long as I get what I came for and it wasn’t gold, at least not monitary gold. Engineer gold! All that information in their heads on how to run the trains! The Union rep wants me to stay away, in so many words, another story for another time. Too late for that! You want to go up there and hear the radio? Says Eddie. “You’re going to make her go upstairs?” pat, the old guy, my newest engineer, says incredulously. “Well,” I say now, “where I really want to go is to go sit with you!” “They have the information I want,” I tell them on the way to the cab car, as we navigate the small confined space between the five car train with the new cars no one likes and the ramp and rail and safety line that isn’t yellow. “Oh!” now pat says. “You want to run the train!” That’s it! And I won’t do it tonight because you would lose your job. “They kind of frown on that,” he says now. Yeah, they would, and I’m not going to be responsible for any engineer desertification. I’m too old to carry that one on my shoulders. Of course I guess I’m not realy the one who is responsible for that, but no matter, I don’t want to even think of it. Later on, sitting in the silence, the only person in the upstairs section of the cab car, I finally realize that the cab car has the controls for his train upstairs. They’re placed up high for visibility and I don’t know why it takes me two years to figure that out, but here I am, climbing up the stairs, settling in for the return trip. “Back to Fullerton,” says pat, clicking that door behind him. He’s in his private lair and I’m in my own happy place. I haven’t even planned to be here today. In fact I don’t even have my beloved railroad gripwith me. It is snugly on the floor next to the couch on this balmy early spring evening, home to Brandy, the white cat. A dinner turns into a trip to the station when the friend I am with says he’s going to go to Cal State to work out. Fine, I say, not realy wanting to go home to the transcript awaiting my magical hands. No, I’d rather go here because Tuesday I have to wait for the cable guy and I’m not going to get here on that day. Regretably, I probably won’t even be free till 5:00 and John, the engineer on 608 tonight, has asked me his usual question. “Are you going to be here tomorrow?” Two years ago when Glenn defected to Lancaster, an Bobby took time off to get married, John took his place, and asked me the same thing. Here he is again, taking bobby’s place. Bobby is going on vacation and John is a big flirt, and Bobby is going to go off and get married to someone else, but he’s really not, because Eddie is teasing me as I go and wave to him sitting on the bench because 606 is late and I don’t get to my other train meet till the train has already pulled to its nestling spot on track four. “What are you doing here?” Eddie asks. “I haven’t seen you in forever!” I don’t know my response right now, I say something, I’m sure, probably about working. I’ve been working, and going home to type or sleep, because I’ve lost sleep during the last few weeks due to my imposed schedule and who knows what else. It’s been a rough couple of weeks with Disney not liking my numbers and some pay checks from my second job getting rippedup accidentally and re sent and dealing with paying bills, the normal stresses of my life. I have to keep my job; it pays the bills and I like to shop. PerhapsI’ll move on in a year or two, but now isn’t the time and so we shall see. These stresses curtail my trips to the station a little, but I manage to get there and tonight as I arrive with only my red purse, feeling strange without my child, the railroad grip, tagging a long, clanging imperiously, I don’t’ know what awaits. Bruce notices the lack of the bag. Wally whom I see later after I step off the train and go to the other side and come across the bridge, notices it, too. This bag has made an impression on all my railroad guys, except the ones who don’t’ know about it, of course. I do miss it. I have to kick brandy out of it; this is a regular occurrence. She loves my jacket and my blanket in the bag, she even brushes the bells and keys at times without any visible harm; she’s used to that, I suppose. It’s her bed when it’s not on my shoulder. Earlier tonight, as I step out of the Honda Sonata and make my way to the depot, I make my way to the restroom that’s closed, too. How can this be legal with people who need to catch trains? The station restroom has been closed for a week. Wonder how long it will take them to open it and who wil complain? I make my way to the café, the patio empty of its regulars. That restroom is closed, too. Fine, I’ll go to the Spaghetti Factory. I go there, take care of business, return to the platform, and make it just in time to see Carey on 606. Speed restrictions are slowing things down tonight, literally, I suppose. The balmy pleasant evening, quiet, not too many passengers scattered here and there, a couple of guys huddled under the brick pillar to the bridge, talking. No Valerie. No Dave Noris. I make my way to 606. Carey’s bell clangs, he talks to dispatch, it’s a nod and a smile, a hello, a wave and off to the Orange sub for 606 on its way to someone’s paradise. By the time I hav the first conversation with Eddie, train 608 is just about to pull into the station. It is on time. Amtrak 785 is late. 784 has delayed 606. the Angels Express is in operation for the second year in a row. It is a busy Metrolink night, but I’m waiting for 608, my regular train meet, because Eddie says Bobby is on vacation. He probably is, thoughEddie’s plans forBobby are certainly not on that engineer’s agenda. Eddie is a big tease, if you haven’t noticed. The click of 608’s window, the man talking to me, at first I think it’s Carey, but it can’t be Carey, he’s in a completely different place. No, it’s John, the extra, and “it’s good to see you!” he says enthusiastically. There aren’t any people around here, it seems, or at least no one is asking me if I want the train. We talk about money. What is it with engineers and money? People and money. Do we all stress about the same thing no matter how much we make? Did our parents worry so much about this? Well we are a few generations removed from the Depression so maybe we’ll all end up in the soup line eventually. “I try to be smart and frugal,” says John conversationally. Smart man. He makes more than me. If he has to be frugal what about me? “At least we can pay the bills,” I say, and the conversation ends. John asks for this job, he says. He should be there for two weeks. I’ll see him again. He says it’s nice to see me. Wonder if he says that to every girl? Back on 642, just as we pull into the Laguna Niguel station, a woman comes downstairs We recognize each other immediately. It as been a quiet trip, I enjoy the silence, I’m the only one in this car. And I don’t’ mind the seats. Maybe the paint scheme is a little disturbing but here’s enough room for me here. Of course I don’t have the baby with me, so we’ll have to reevaluate that conclusion. Next time I’ll carry my bag and all of its bells and we’ll see if there’s room. I sit and look at text messages, and then we are here. “I didn’t know you were a railroad groupy,” says Cheryl. She moved to south county nine years ago. She divorced and moved from Arizona to be near the ocean, again. Eddie now appears, and it’s all over. They’re both teasing me! I’m flirting with the engineers, I’m not behaving, I’m causing trouble. “I sat next to Shelley for a long time,” says Cheryl. I’m laughing. Maybe it’s just a stress relief. We exit the train, it is quiet, this is an easy job, someone says. I’ve decided to take it on a whim. I’ve wanted to do this for a while but tonight I finally have the money and the time. I decide tonight must be the night. So now, here I am, Cheryl disappears, Eddie does his thing and Pat climbs up into the cab car. “Back to Fullerton,” he says. “And those darn rules!” I’m relegated to my spot as a passenger. The hum of the air conditioner, the lights, the faint clang of the bels, the weak two note cab car horn, the squalk of the mile post detector, a beeping, the recorded voice adjuring us to watch our step, station stops are brief, thank you for riding Metrolink says the conductor. Yes, thank you for ridingMetrolink Miss Railroad Groupy! I have a ticket, I tell him, getting on the train. I don’t want to free load because I know the conductor. I’m not that way. I’ll pay my fare. Now I sit here, just enjoying the return trip, the quiet, it is my quiet car. The Fullerton station is quiet again. I guess tonight I have been a railroad groupy. I’ve met a new engineer, harassed a conductor, telling him he needs to be writing novels not working trains. You’re in the wrong business, I say, going to meet my second engineer. four engineers, one train, one conductor, a couple of people I know, a ride home from a talkitive railfan who doesn’t talk tonight. Mitch Woods serenades us with blues keyboard riffs as we hop on the freeway and head home. The money I’ve saved sits in my purse, the clink of those coins a memory now, the change from the cash I’ve put in the Metrolink machine for my ticket. A completely surprise trip to Fullerton, four engineers, one conductor, a teasing fest, and trains. The Fullerton engineer girl has turned into a railroad groupy. It doesn’ get much better than that. But I bet it will!
Copyright © 2012 Shelley J Alongi |