Metrolink111: Icecream And The Umbrella Twenty years from now if someone asks me my favorite memory of the Fullerton train station I think I’ll say it occurs on Friday February 6, 2009, sitting on the north side of the railroad tracks on the benches next to the planter holding an umbrella as a constant rain shower pelts the tracks and the benches and any commuters or rail fans in the area. After work that day I head out to the train station, the third trip since the week of Christmas. Ice-cream and the chatsworth Connection On the first trip which occurs early in January I sit by the railroad tracks but first must make a run to the café for the obligatory hamburger and later the mandatory ice-cream purchase for consumption at the railroad tracks. I wonder how many curious freight or passenger engineers will take memories to their families and all other acquaintances of a woman rapped up against the cold eating what looks like ice-cream? I don’t’ know. If train engineers are even looking at me they might see several things, the most prominent being the hand holding the ice-cream cone, usually a drumstick with chocolate ice-cream or vanilla, with the yummy nut topping and the little bite-sized piece of chocolate at the bottom of the cone. Usually it’s two of these cones, and sometimes an ice-cream sandwich. So in my romantic imaginings of some freight engineer heading off to bed later on that night or early in the morning while I’m heading off for my own commute to work, in some freight engineer’s dreams there might be an ice-cream cone making its way into that person’s sleep. That’s just my imagining of course, and the ice-cream is, in my own world, a comforting, cooling, calming way to spend my evening, especially when a freight train shrieks passed, bringing goods and services to our recession plagued economy. But we’re not talking about recession tonight we’re discussing ice-cream and the umbrella, railroad tracks, and people who use them. On the first trip, before I purchase the ice-cream, something strange happens. Coming out of the café after ordering my hamburger I ask if anyone is sitting at my usual table on the patio. Indeed there is someone sitting here. Her name is Leslie and she is headed to Moorpark to spend time with her father. She and her boyfriend have just moved out of a shared apartment because of the lease ending and so she stays with her father because now they can’t really afford a place together. Leslie tells me she’s going to union Station to catch train 113 she thinks to Moorpark. Anyone reading this who has any inclination of what I’ve been interested in lately and even those who just know the schedules might know that the train that goes to Moorpark is the Ventura County line train, the line on which the Chatsworth accident occurred last September, the one I’ve been working my way through since that day when twenty-five people died and my fascination with Robert M. Sanchez, the perished engineer began. Sitting there hearing this news, I know that Simi Valley is the second to last stop for the line, and that Moorpark is the last one. Discussing the fact that she is heading to that destination gives me chills. Anything with the Chatsworth Station gives me chills. Thinking of that tunnel between Chatsworth and Simi Valley and then thinking of her on that train taking the exact same route stops me in my tracks. Now I know that that train and the Coast Starlight and the train to Santa Barbara has passed that way successfully many times since that day in September. I’ve been on that stretch of track for my own personal journey through the metrolink crash site combined with being a tourist. Perhaps some of the same freight engineers who I imagine might see me holding ice-cream in the cold have been through there. Recently a woman was killed when hit by an Amtrak train going through that tunnel. The woman walked through the tunnel, not, on any day, a good idea. Just out of that tunnel is the Simi Valley Station and then there is the Moorpark station. Leslie has no idea that I’m so affected by her innocent admission. She’s just going on her own journey and I’m sitting at the table feeling as if I’ve been hit in the head. Leslie catches her train to L.A. Union Station, and I suppose, her train to Moorpark, the train that the now embroiled Robert Sanchez operated for however long it was, and I’m still sitting her waiting for a hamburger, or have I eaten it already? Probably I’ve consumed the hamburger during the conversation and now the bottle of too sweet Catsup and the soda sit on my table as I prepare to go out to the tracks. I don’t remember much about sitting by the tracks that night. I know freights came and went as well as passenger trains. The Dog and the Freight Train In the course of time, a woman appears holding a small dog in a carrier. Her name is Katie and she tells me her father worked for Marriott. Her father is blind, she says and no longer works for Marriott. Katie and Mickey, the dog, are heading for Los Angeles Union Station. Mickey has another name; Stitch, based on the Disney character. Someone loves Disney characters. Our conversation is brief, punctuated by soft sounds as the dog whimpers and now shakes as a freight train passes. He is a well behaved dog, and that conversation is nice. I’m sure that conversation is a brief one, I must leave soon because my work schedule has changed and I now work weekdays. Walter appears somewhere as I leave the station. He doesn’t talk to me constantly that day. I leave early to get the bus home, desperate for a bathroom because once again I’ve drunk too much liquid and by the time I get home the need and use of it are a welcome relief. I think, though, that the thing I remember about the station that night is the conversation with Leslie. An innocent passenger heading off to Moorpark still sticks in my head. I’m sure she’s found her way to and from Moorpark by now. The Engineer and Creativity The second trip I make occurs on Monday February 2. On February 2 I get off early from work and so I head down to the train station in order to eat and relax. The trip there is terribly interesting. Usually to get from work to the train station I take the 47 bus down Anaheim Boulevard. It either terminates or stops across from the Fullerton train station, depending on which bus I board. That night, two buses show up at once. The driver of the first bus tells everyone he needs to let off a passenger in a wheelchair so take the bus behind it. A woman who is trying to catch a train is very upset, I’m not sure there is any other way to describe it. The woman is running late, she will ultimately miss her train. Before she misses her train she complains to the driver behind us, and even says something about the other driver denying access to the bus to the blind lady, that would be me. I’m in power down mode. I’m off work, I’m headed for the train station. The lady is so upset that she’s stressing out for both of us. She fusses and fumes all the way to the station’s Getting off at the station I begin to make my way toward the tracks. She comes back and asks me if I understand that the first driver denied me access to the bus. “I thought you had a train to catch,” I snap in an annoyed way. None of this matters to me, I’m in power down mode. If I want to get upset, don’t’ worry, I will get upset. Getting upset tonight is not on my agenda, especially about something that doesn’t matter to me. The woman does say that she missed her train. “You have to wait an hour,” I say. “Thirty-five minutes,” she says and disappears. I never see her again. I hope I never see her again. The funny thing is that the woman is upset about something completely different till that bus shows up and then suddenly she’s upset, I think more that she misses her train, than about anyone else getting access denied to them. I think in this case it’s all about her. That’s my introduction to the train station that night. Jose makes the hamburger and I go out and sit down to eat it. It is an uneventful evening and then I go out to the tracks. Tonight and maybe the trip before that is all about creating. Glen is sick, my character, and I have to develop the plot. Glen, the train engineer, has to deal with issues. I see him sitting with Judy on a rock over the beach, holding her. And I see him sick, too, two different things going on at once. Funny when I write my stories I start them by imagining things. The quiet punctuated by a stimulating conversation, a freight train, and a rail fan coming by to say hello to me, all help stimulate this process and tonight is no exception. When I create by the railroad tracks I don’t write words, I see images. It isn’t till I get home that the words come. The train station has become the creative catalyst for me, helped along by the ice-cream, the railroad tracks, and the umbrella. In the midst of my creating, Curt on the scooter shows up. He starts catching me up on what’s been going on around here and suddenly a freight train begins to pull up to the station. Slowly, the diesel powered locomotive whose specs I didn’t get approaches the station. The engineer has a red light, Curt explains. He’s going to bring that baby on ome to us, it seems. The engine stops just in front of us and you hear the rush of air as the engineer sets the brake.I’m curious. Is he going to get out and do something? Sit there? What is he doing behind those tented windows? Well, we know he’s doing one thing: he’s waiting for a light to change in his favor. Good for him. You can get up, walk to the tracks, and not touch the train, but be very close. Curt then describes the following sequence of events. The engineer looks up and observes the activity or something in the café. I’m not sure what he’s seeing or what he’s looking for. It could be food, it could be the old rail cars that are there, it could be a person. The engineer then, in a moment of connection, opens his window and waves at us. I am as stoked as an old train steam engine. The engineer has seen us and acknowledges our presence. What the engineer thinks I don’t’ know but he has waved, and so there I am stimulated to even more creativity. It may be why I’ve finished the framework for the seventeenth chapter of my story about my fictional railroad engineer. But the final catalyst for completing the chapter comes on the third trip, the one on February 6, where both the ice-cream and the umbrella play a role. The Chatsworth Connection, Old Friends and the Picture In the middle of being creative I’ve started to think about the Chatsworth train wreck again. On the third trip to the station I don’t’ yet know about the official articled that states that Rob Sanchez was reported to a supervisor by his conductor for his excessive cell phone use. This subject will find its way into another essay, not this one, and only comes to light here because it is Lillian who brings the report to my attention, but I’ve heard it before on the channel 9 news probably a month ago I have a lot of opinions about that one. Don’t worry I’ll write them all down. The reason I bring up the Chatsworth crash again is because between the second and third trips to the station I have finally started to complete the project that I’ve started months earlier. I have finally purchased the frames that I will use to put Rob’s picture on my wall. There are two pictures of him that I was given. The one originally published in the L.A. Times on September 17 and another one given to me by the same person who published that picture. My plan is to put these two pictures on the wall and then add a picture of his friend who gave me the pictures and then to add photographs of trains. Finally, the plan is starting to physically take shape and is no longer just an idea in my head. When I appear at the train station on Friday February 6 I have the frames on the wall, and one of the pictures printed. I’m thinking about the Chatsworth crash again because I’m finally starting to put into placed the idea I had to do this picture wall in my office. I spend several moments thinking about this project, but the evening is full of other events. The café is open and I order the obligatory hamburger. It has been raining off and on all day and so no one is really sitting outside today unless they sit in the tunnel at the tables there. I choose to sit inside. Larry shows up and we talk about me working for Disney and then he tells me about an engineer who comes here on the weekends and works for one of the L.A. rail lines. I’ll have to make a trip down to the Fullerton station on the weekends to see if I can find him. Larry tells me about him, if Larry is there on the weekends it may be that I can find out from him if Norm the engineer is there. He discloses this information because I tell him that a freight engineer waves on Monday and so there’s another piece of information to add to my arsenal. I imagine if I make enough trips to the station I’ll meet an engineer. That’s the goal. The hamburger disappears, the ice-cream actually gets eaten in the café, and then something else happens. A long time rail fan, the brother of the man who proposed to me at the station years ago comes inside to order a hamburger and says hello to me. Jose is a constant source of teasing and being teased and so Larry, Dan, and I engage in this pastime for a while. “Shelley always sticks up for Jose,” Larry says. I have to stick up for him, I explain. “He got me through the worst of my Chatsworth train crash grieving.” He did this by cooking hamburgers and comforting me with food. No wonder I’m fascinated with this Metro link engineer, he liked food. I like it. Like it? That’s an understatement. It is and was a comfort I’m sure. “Were you on that train” Larry wants to know. No, I say. No, I was here. That’s when Dan pipes up and says that the engineer got in trouble for using his cell phone, a fact which isn’t really true but that’s how Dan stated it. According to the article in the L.A. Times, the last eight months of Rob’s operation of the train do not show any written violations of safety rules. An employee companied and the conductor complained. Dan doesn’t know my connection with this engineer and I don’t’ mention anything about having the picture of him on my wall. Now when I go to the train station and this subject comes up I’m going to mention that I have Rob’s picture on my wall. I’ll keep you informed of the reaction. After the consumption of food and the obligatory trip to the restroom I’m off to the tracks. Larry talks to Simon a man who works the sleeper car on the Southwest Chief and is heading home now for his break. We watch the Southwest Chief pull in and Simon disappears. Larry leaves and I am all alone by the tracks. I make my way back to the side I usually occupy and then it’s me, the rain, the umbrella, creativity, and trains. This is bliss! Sitting there, the commuters disappear into the station’s The rain comes down steadily, soaking my umbrella. The creative juices flow. I understand now in the rain that Glen and Judy must have peace on their rock above the beach because the next year is going to get difficult. Glen is still sick and I have to resolve that, but the two scenes don’t happen simultaneously. The quiet, steady rain, the quiet of the tracks, no talkers to tell me about things I don’t’ want to know, no conversations, quiet, cool rain at the Fullerton train station. I love it. NO engineers wave, well, if they do I don’t’ know it, no stories emerge from the commuters waiting for their late trains. Tonight it’s all about the ice-cream, the umbrella, comforting for the Chatsworth train wreck, peace for Glen and Judy between the time he returns from Astoria to bury his father and face his own fear, and the time when he goes back to work and she sits in the car behind him on his train. Tonight it’s all about no recession, no debt, no trouble, no worries, it’s all about the ice-cream, the umbrella, the rain, and the beautiful, deadly, powerful, calming, caressing, and calling trains. The Smile I bum a ride from someone I know who picks me up at the station and go home. It is still raining. But I am happy. I know I can finish my chapter, I know Rob’s picture is going to be on my wall. In fact tonight, Saturday, as my father’s last bit of help after he drops me off from my nieces’ birthday party, he puts the picture in its frame and now here it is, in my office, above the computer monitor An where am I now? I am in the living room on the laptop. Rob smiles at the cats in my office. I’m sure the cats ignore the smile. I am happy, and I’m waiting for my next trip to the Fullerton train station. This is truly bliss.
Copyright © 2009 Shelley J Alongi |