Home for Christmas

Home for Christmas

or

How Can Something That Moves So Fast Take So Long?

Chicago, the third week of December.  Visiting Marie and Greg. Seeing some good shows.  Eating some good meals. Helping them pick out a Christmas tree.  Well, standing around while they picked out a tree.  Standing around some more while they picked out two trees (one for the living room, one for the dining room) since they couldn’t agree on one.  Helping them do last minute shopping.  Well, standing around while they did last minute shopping. 

Then, time to go back to New York.  I had, on a whim, arranged to fly out and return on Amtrak’s Lake Shore. I had told my family, as a joke, “I’ll be home for Christmas.”

A late lunch at Ann Sather’s Swedish restaurant.  A last show – an adaptation of Thomas Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the West  – at the theater that Marie manages.  The last bit of dueling, swinging from ropes, and swashbuckling, and it was really time to go. 

One more cup of coffee. Then it was finally really time to go.

In Marie’s car, heading downtown. Off Lake Shore Drive, with her usual remark, “well, we survived.” Under the L in the loop, and up to the entrance of Union Station.  “Have a good trip.”  “Take care of yourself. I can’t stand the thought of you waiting on windy L platforms.”  “I’ll be fine.”  “Love you.”  “Love you.”

Into the station with my suitcase and the shopping bag (with my last minute shopping from, Marshall Field’s). Onto the platform, and onto my car. A “sleeper coach”, one of the few remaining examples of the mid-20^th-century design that promised something sort of like Pullman comfort at something closer to coach prices.  About 40 passengers, where a Pullman might have 26.  How much smaller could the compartments be?

I found myself thinking of the old puzzle about the fox, the rabbit, and the lettuce, in a rowboat that would only hold two at a time.  I could stand in the corridor while my suitcase and shopping bag enjoyed the comfort of the compartment; or I could share the compartment with one of them, while the other was in corridor. Eventually I was able to squeeze all of us into the space.  How much legroom would I really need for an 18 hour trip?

Time for the Lake Shore to depart.  The first indication that it would live up to its reputation of “Late for Sure” was the late arrival of a connecting train from the west. But we eventually departed.  Rail yards. Abandoned factories glimpsed in the darkness. Christmas lights on the South Side.

Dinner in the diner.  I was seated with a young couple and their daughter, who was maybe eight. He worked for Kodak, and they were returning to Rochester from a combined business/holiday trip.  I amazed the daughter by showing her a trick I had learned from a New Haven Railroad waiter long, long ago: if you hold the glass in one hand and the can in the other, you can pour soda on a moving train without spilling it.  When we had eaten, the daughter politely told me it had been a pleasure to meet me.

Then, a visit to another survivor of mid-20^th-century railroad car design: a dome car.  Sitting up in the darkness, seeing the countryside slide past, watching the signals turn red as the engine passed them.  The dome was almost empty, except for a young woman sitting opposite me.  We chatted for a while. She was a December graduate of a very small college in the Southwest, heading east for her new job.  She was very concerned about how she would adapt to life in a big city. Utica.

I sat in the dome for hours, till I was nearly asleep.  Back to my compartment. The porter converted the seat into a bed, squashing my shopping bag in the process.  I discovered the heater control, with its two unmarked settings, which turned out to be “frigid” and “oppressively hot”. Fitful sleep.  I awoke to the almost inaudibly high squeal of brakes, and the sensation of the train slowing.  I looked out, and we were coming into Elyria, Ohio.  As the train slowed to a stop, the doors opened on a car in the parking lot, and a man and woman got out, followed by an older woman, and a young boy and girl.  The kids were very proudly carrying bags and suitcases for the older woman.  Seeing Grandma off on her Christmas trip east? 

Fitful sleep.  Awoke somewhere in upstate New York.  Breakfast in the diner.  I thought of my Rochester dinner companions, who would have been off the train by then.  Back to the dome, more crowded now, to see our entrance into Syracuse, with snow blowing against the glass of the dome.  A woman with an English accent, looking at the outskirts of Syracuse:  “Oo! It reminds me of Birmingham.”  Somewhere off in snowy Syracuse were my second cousins.

More Upstate New York. Coffee in the lounge. Very late arrival at Rensselaer. The dome car and others uncoupled to form the Boston section, so the rest of my sightseeing would be through a compartment window. I moved my bags to a compartment on the right side, to have a view of the Hudson.

Departure, even later, from Rensselaer.  Repeated announcements that there would be only one call for lunch in the diner; and then finally the predicted “first and only call.”  I ate lunch. As I headed back to my car, the “second and final call” for lunch was made.

At long last, onto Metro-North, where we actually made up some of the lost time.  Then onto Amtrak trackage on the west side of Manhattan, where the recovered time and more was lost, sitting outside the entrance to Penn Station.

Then Penn Station.  Against all odds, I was home for Christmas.

 

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