The Vanilla Gorilla dropped me off at Joliet Union Station at 3 degrees and 8:15 AM. The station was empty but for the security man and the clerk. There were also two track technicians in yellow, inspecting things. I show the rail pass and the clerk informs me, “Sir, all Amtrak trains are canceled.”
I had gotten the first train running, the only time in ten days that a crumb might rail it from Missouri to Chicongo. Blessed I was. The clerk pointed across the street, “That Metra train, that goes to Chicago, Rock Island, east of Union Station, in three minutes.”
A track technician showed me the way and this old cracker ended up running at low speed, with luggage, down the platform. Behind a shapely redhead, I boarded and made my peace with the logistical magic of USGistan. The cars have a stair that goes up to an upper level for a kind of cafe seating. I stayed down with my luggage. This line tracks into Chicongo along a string of small towns then bedroom hives. How do I pay?
The train talks to us in a vapid female voice.
Before long, this light rail snake stops at a small old place and talks again, warns that the doors are closing, and lets on a short blond Karen and a tall, thick snow ape of twenty or so, who sits across from me, casting shifty eyes at the various hipsters, resident aliens of color, and the usual—no shy—suspects. He says nothing. There are a lot of stops. It is a pleasant Journey. We come to a larger station and the big fellow offloads and walks along looking to buy a ticket from a Kiosk. The train pulls off and the strident voice of that natural NCO race calls, “Tickets out!”
Such tall, medium build men of gawdly hue make excellent human herders, bossy, loud, averse to cussing, eager to transfer the weight of the godless USG social pyramid downward upon my pale shoulders.
I look up, show him my Amtrak ticket and he says, ‘We got nothin’ to do with that.”
“The line was canceled so I hoped on and need to pay.”
“Where did you board?”
“Joliet.”
“Six dollars and seventy-five cents.”
I dig for a five and two ones as he chews out a young pale lady for not having her screen bright enough to scan, reminding her, “I know you, told you before.”
“Here you go, Sir.”
He turns and sternly advises, “I was enlightening the young lady and you interrupted,” he beams hatefully at my pale hand.
“I am sorry, Sir.”
He then takes the money with a shrug of disappointment, having no cause to bounce me off into the killing snowscape. He drops a quarter in my palm and hands me a punched ticket that has the fare zones on it, like the old 1980s Maryland bus ticket. Onward he goes, bossing more pale folks and smiling upon the ladies of ebony, headed to work, and not required to show tickets. The young fellow had made it three stops out of the 1st of the 4 zones and avoided payment. Good for him.
The outer ring of Chicongo on the south side has plenty of wooded gullies. The housing is standard suburban America, not a shiver of soul in it. I asked the conductor, “Sir, is the end of the line near Union Station?”
He sneers with his nose, then informs with a stayed grimace, “Three blocks east.”
He wanted me to ask what was east, his station or Union Station, but I failed to fall into the scolding trap.
“Thank you, Sir.”
“You’re welcome,” he growls.
The train slides in on the east side of the river from Union Station, the vast freight yard visible.
Unloading last, past the conductor, I say, “Thank you so much, Sir.”
“Thank you,” he relents to the trash wafting by his uniformed beak.
The station is well-designed and I trundle along with backpack on, gear bag stacked on 4-wheeled suitcase, rolling through the rock salt over the clean concrete. At the vast lobby, with 5 egress points, a short, fat, woman of plain appearance with a bowl-cut head of real blond hair is waving greetings in her yellow uniform. I stop and she says with a smile, “Welcome to Chicago!”
Good morning, miss,” and I visually check her tits and ass, finding acceptable proportions, and continue, as she smiles and blushes, “Union Station, Doll?”
She points to the north west corner, “Out that door and down the escalator. Cross [forgot the founding father name] street, one block to Jackson, make a left, walk over the bridge, then down to your right will be a bakery—they make really good breakfast. That’s is the short cut, or you go to the Great Hall diagonally to the right.”
“Miss, that is very helpful, thank you.”
In a just world I would have beaten the conductor and brought him to this lady as a likely porter to haul her wardrobe and fetch pie from the bakery… Yet we dwell in the abyss.
The thrill of hearing and feeling the rumble of a dozen locomotives below the street make me feel thankful. Into the Great Hall, the most pretentious edifice of American avarice I have been blessed to enter, now some fifty times, I walked, humping the luggage down marble stairs. Down through the boarding hall and to the well-guarded bathrooms and senior/assisted lounge, blocked by the police station, manned by three officers I went. Stopped by the Haji, I asked, can I pay to get into the metropolitan Lounge, sir?”
“I do not know. If not, we will be glad to seat you here,” pointing at my white beard, “no need for you to show Identification!”
I decided to eat and take vitamins in the small common area between the vending machines, at the base of the boarding hall ramp, decorated with great maps of American train routes.
Two elderly Amish women with blankets eat from a cooler with a man my age who has lost an arm. An ebony grifter I have seen often walks up, ‘Food for the chillin’, for the chillin.’”
I give him a bag of peanuts, he looks at it, shocked, then nods and walks off.
Another ebony bum comes to all but the Amish, “Sir, show me some green please, dis shit is rough out here,” as his ashen lips set a quiver.”
I emptied my front slide pocket of $2 in quarters, “That’s the pickens, bro.”
The food for children guy comes back to me with his line and I say, “Bro, I just gave you food!”
“Oh, oh yeah, sorry,” and on he walked, convincing me to abandon the Amish to that hallway seating and retreat to the Senior Lounge. During my 10 AM to 6 PM stay no fewer than six regional lines were canceled, four replaced by buses, two by refunds at the counter. I felt like luck had smiled my way.
