heading back
5:11pm leaving
I'm not a good traveler, not because I don't love to travel, but rather because I can hardly bear to leave any place behind. As a kid, I stole souvenirs of every motel, every Waffle House, every rest stop, and every unscheduled delay, because the notion of losing a place that I'd had at my fingertips has always been almost too much. Over the years, I've developed the finer skills of moderation, and my closets are no longer packed with the complimentary mints and placemats of destinations of little distinction, but on longer stays, I still have pangs of wanting to hold on, to be dragged away like a prisoner on the green mile.
I've wound up my trip to Chicago in an odd way, having seen my brother and sister-in-law off to the El and returned to their empty apartment to loll about in peculiar isolation for several hours. I tidied listlessly, doing the last dishes and watering the plants, finally closing the place up like a vacation cabin and locking the door one last time. I stepped down the creaky, well-polished stairs, dropped a few bags of trash in the dumpster, and headed out and over to Ogden Street.
Today's one of those bitter cold days, with biting wind and a vicious freeze that pervades every opening in your clothes and chills your eyes to the point that you lose fine focus. I watched the skyline rise and fall around me as I walked briskly on rapidly tiring feet, still feeling a bit overwhelmed at the scale of this city. A huge tower block looms on the south side of Ogden, ten stories of deserted former medical school relaxing into a disgraceful monochromic Mondrian as its cladding of marble selectively drops away. In my town, a building this size would be a skyscraper, lording over Main Street, but here's it nothing, nowhere, and no one cares.
I walked further and looked back to the intricate, brooding facade of the Cook County Hospital, which is deserted as of last week and looking into the concrete gulf where the Eisenhower & El run with an almost lonely look. Catching a terrific view of the downtown skyline, with the mute towers there winking at me in blue, and missing my family as their train heads south to San Antonio, I could easily understand the sentiment.
I'm surprised to feel something catch in my throat, but before I can think more about it, I see the El racing me to the platform, and I'm off, running under a mountain of luggage, hoping to beat the train, and for a moment, I'm breathing pure adrenaline, a fitting end to a week of almost decadent inactivity.
6:13pm the waiting is...
I wish they'd announce which gate the Capitol Limited will be boarding from--it'd be a shame to wait two hours and still get a lousy seat. I've at least got a friendly neighbor in the lounge, though, a bit of quotidien chat to pass the moments.
7:01pm on the train
Got through the waiting, got on board, and now I'm perched behind a baby, relearning the art of religion as I implore the various godheads for silence, or at least for occasional disruptions in the screeching and parental calm-talk.
10:18pm perchance to dream
I've been fidgeting in my seat, trying to read, but just on the edge of being too tired to actually do it well. I've also been trying to sleep, but the book's got me too interested to do that well, either. As a compromise, I've perched sideways on the seat, reading, but holding the book in a way that'll let it drop to the side should I actually manage to drift off.
4:20am the wee hours lounge (southbound edition)
I've finally drifted out of a fitful sleep, if not a dream-filled one. I'm really not suited to sleeping in a chair, unlike my father, who could have probably slept in a dentist's chair during an anaesthesia free drilling session. Luck was on my side, though, and my seatmate fled to a refuge far from the crying baby (which settled down amazingly quickly, I must say), so I again had a pair of seats in which to attempt a sleeping position. I managed to shake the airline cramp instinct and spread out in a sloppy sprawl of khakis and flannel, rolling and re-rolling my old brown coat into a pillow of sorts. I'd find a perfect position, often triggering an almost involuntary "mmmmm" as I curled into it and felt sleep closing on me like a vise, only to wake again an hour later and have to undertake the quest all over again.
4:41am Pittsburgh
I'm back in Pittsburgh, stopped in the station, and that damned light's right outside my window again, flooding my seat with a murky yellow light that makes me feel like the subject of a Serrano artwork. I'm looking forward to dawn and the chance to hover at the window watching something other than a seamless light show.
6:37am Dawson, PA
We cleared an interminable chain of mobile homes and sailed into a town of amazing victorian buildings, resplendent in turrets and gingerbread. I have to wonder where the wealth came to build a place like this so far from anything.
6:43am Connellsville, PA
Another in-between town, a confection of reasonably well-preserved twentieth century urban evolution. I watch the town sweep by and wonder what I always wonder--who would I be if I'd grown up here instead of in Scaggsville, MD?
9:13am Cumberland, MD
Back in Maryland's other city, this time in daylight. The spires of the churches glint in the bright morning sun, and life goes on around the train in a Monday sort of way. This town is such a paradox, simultaneously lovely and raw, mixing history and bad taste in nearly equal measure. We've pulled in next to the VFW/American Legion building, the words "FOR GOD AND COUNTRY" emblazoned on its side in foot-high helvetica, and we're creeping along and into the station at a slow enough pace to take it all in at leisure. One of the things Paul and I always had in common was one of our criteria for what we thought of a place--how would it be to be a gay teenager there--and I can't say I'd want to be one here. The fringes at the right are a little too entrenched and too privileged for this town to be welcoming to anyone who doesn't fit neatly in the mold, but I can't help but think it wouldn't necessarily be a bad place to return to once you'd built up the wisdom and fortitude to make your own place in the world. The whole cloth of Cumberland may be burlap, but it's plentiful and sturdy. Maybe I'm just romanticizing the place, but it's hard not to, seeing neighborhood after neighborhood of old victorian houses stacked up on the hillsides like an overly optimistic train garden.
9:38am somewhere in-between
I've moved to the lounge car again in hopes of catching a glimpse of my sad little cabin from the train. I'm not entirely sure that this line is even the one that goes by there, but I figure I'll give it a try at least until I pass Martinsburg without seeing anything familiar.
The windows on the right side of the train are appallingly dirty, and for no obvious reason, because the windows on the other side look fine.
10:02am Orleans Crossroads
Passed through the little townlet (maybe eleven houses) known as Orleans Crossroads, feeling overjoyed to see Clyde's old house and the little road leading to the tracks, and the access road you take to get to my cabin. I watched the DC lawyer's cottage pass, then Light's Farm, then the little brown cottage next to mine, then, almost lost in the sunlight flickering through the trees, my sad little cabin, perched on the hillside looking as run-down as ever, but not, as I'd pessimistically imagined, burned down or otherwise in ruins. The electric bill suddenly dropped to zero a year ago, and I've been anxious about why, skipping the obvious possibilities like the single light I leave on burning out or a tree knocking out the wires. In typical fashion, I've imagined it being burned down by evil teenagers or collapsing from its tilted foundation of railroad ties and slumping into a pile of firewood on the hillside.
I had the direction all wrong on the last trip, though it was dark enough I'd never have found it anyway, but it's a curious feeling to be on one of those Superliners I've waved at over the years. It's almost too miraculous to think that the train that takes me from Maryland to Chicago would run almost through the front yard of the old place, and it makes me want to get up there soon with my tools and raw materials, to keep my Dad's last surviving boondoggle going as a sign of defiance.
10:09am Great Cacapon, WV
Got a great view of the old "big city" that Orleans Crossroads is a suburb to. I've made this trip to Hancock, Maryland a million times, following the chunk gravel road back to the interstate as an alternative to the more baroque route through the mountains. Tracking the Potomac river, a thousand rough campsites assembled from old trailers, shacks, and lean-tos line the river, and at night, bonfires reign over the darkness from most of them. Every few years the river rises and the old beat-up travel trailers end up hanging from the trees. Sometimes the camps get rebuilt, with the old trailer frames still dangling overhead like tribal markers.
10:20am the little airport
There's a tiny airstrip here, immaculately maintained. Dad had always planned to keep an old junky car here, so he could fly up here and just drive the last few miles, but it never came to pass. When I think of his old plane, it makes me feel like a child of great wealth, even if it was just a junky old 1946 Aeronca with no running lights or electrical system. That plane scared the hell out of me, but it was something mystical to Dad, something I'm just getting a handle on now.
10:52am nearing Martinsburg, WV
Just returned from the pocket restroom, which is an experience akin to attempting to pee while competing in a rodeo. That said, I'm amazed at how clean and non-stinky they are.
This region seems to be on the boundary where run-down, but distinct and well-loved houses disappear in favor of late-century tract houses with showy facades and crappy siding everywhere else. I don't have a lot of friends who live in these sort of houses, because their character becomes suspect to me as soon as I find that they willingly live in such wretched places. Maybe I'm elitist, maybe I'm just cantankerous, but give me cracked real plaster walls and scruffy real wood floors any day.
10:55am along the C&O canal
Sometimes it's just a shadow, a barely discerable ditch, and others, it looks like it could be put to use again. At any rate, digging a 190-mile body of water from DC to Cumberland is one hell of a project, our own highly-localized Great Wall of China.
We're in Harper's Ferry now, place of John Brown's denouement, town of red brick and grey stone and everywhere everywhere history, hanging over the place like a cloak.
1:31pm (2:31 DC time) Union Station
Back home, back to the bustle, time to rush through the station, call for my ride, and race for the Metro, heading for home.
8:47pm home
Ensconced in the strange familiar environment I call home, halfway between Baltimore and DC, my house neat and tidy because of my Manhattan Project of housecleaning before my trip. I've just woken from a composite bath/nap sort of thing I undertook hoping to make a smoother transition from slowtime to realtime, and I feel muzzy. The dog seemed pleased to see me, though not as much as I'd have hoped. Must dote on her more in the future, to earn a more deranged welcome happy dance. Everything else seems right, but a bit off-center. I feel like writing more about the train, but am a bit tired and raw, so that'll have to wait.
I'm not a good traveler, not because I don't love to travel, but rather because I can hardly bear to leave any place behind. As a kid, I stole souvenirs of every motel, every Waffle House, every rest stop, and every unscheduled delay, because the notion of losing a place that I'd had at my fingertips has always been almost too much. Over the years, I've developed the finer skills of moderation, and my closets are no longer packed with the complimentary mints and placemats of destinations of little distinction, but on longer stays, I still have pangs of wanting to hold on, to be dragged away like a prisoner on the green mile.
I've wound up my trip to Chicago in an odd way, having seen my brother and sister-in-law off to the El and returned to their empty apartment to loll about in peculiar isolation for several hours. I tidied listlessly, doing the last dishes and watering the plants, finally closing the place up like a vacation cabin and locking the door one last time. I stepped down the creaky, well-polished stairs, dropped a few bags of trash in the dumpster, and headed out and over to Ogden Street.
Today's one of those bitter cold days, with biting wind and a vicious freeze that pervades every opening in your clothes and chills your eyes to the point that you lose fine focus. I watched the skyline rise and fall around me as I walked briskly on rapidly tiring feet, still feeling a bit overwhelmed at the scale of this city. A huge tower block looms on the south side of Ogden, ten stories of deserted former medical school relaxing into a disgraceful monochromic Mondrian as its cladding of marble selectively drops away. In my town, a building this size would be a skyscraper, lording over Main Street, but here's it nothing, nowhere, and no one cares.
I walked further and looked back to the intricate, brooding facade of the Cook County Hospital, which is deserted as of last week and looking into the concrete gulf where the Eisenhower & El run with an almost lonely look. Catching a terrific view of the downtown skyline, with the mute towers there winking at me in blue, and missing my family as their train heads south to San Antonio, I could easily understand the sentiment.
I'm surprised to feel something catch in my throat, but before I can think more about it, I see the El racing me to the platform, and I'm off, running under a mountain of luggage, hoping to beat the train, and for a moment, I'm breathing pure adrenaline, a fitting end to a week of almost decadent inactivity.
6:13pm the waiting is...
I wish they'd announce which gate the Capitol Limited will be boarding from--it'd be a shame to wait two hours and still get a lousy seat. I've at least got a friendly neighbor in the lounge, though, a bit of quotidien chat to pass the moments.
7:01pm on the train
Got through the waiting, got on board, and now I'm perched behind a baby, relearning the art of religion as I implore the various godheads for silence, or at least for occasional disruptions in the screeching and parental calm-talk.
10:18pm perchance to dream
I've been fidgeting in my seat, trying to read, but just on the edge of being too tired to actually do it well. I've also been trying to sleep, but the book's got me too interested to do that well, either. As a compromise, I've perched sideways on the seat, reading, but holding the book in a way that'll let it drop to the side should I actually manage to drift off.
4:20am the wee hours lounge (southbound edition)
I've finally drifted out of a fitful sleep, if not a dream-filled one. I'm really not suited to sleeping in a chair, unlike my father, who could have probably slept in a dentist's chair during an anaesthesia free drilling session. Luck was on my side, though, and my seatmate fled to a refuge far from the crying baby (which settled down amazingly quickly, I must say), so I again had a pair of seats in which to attempt a sleeping position. I managed to shake the airline cramp instinct and spread out in a sloppy sprawl of khakis and flannel, rolling and re-rolling my old brown coat into a pillow of sorts. I'd find a perfect position, often triggering an almost involuntary "mmmmm" as I curled into it and felt sleep closing on me like a vise, only to wake again an hour later and have to undertake the quest all over again.
4:41am Pittsburgh
I'm back in Pittsburgh, stopped in the station, and that damned light's right outside my window again, flooding my seat with a murky yellow light that makes me feel like the subject of a Serrano artwork. I'm looking forward to dawn and the chance to hover at the window watching something other than a seamless light show.
6:37am Dawson, PA
We cleared an interminable chain of mobile homes and sailed into a town of amazing victorian buildings, resplendent in turrets and gingerbread. I have to wonder where the wealth came to build a place like this so far from anything.
6:43am Connellsville, PA
Another in-between town, a confection of reasonably well-preserved twentieth century urban evolution. I watch the town sweep by and wonder what I always wonder--who would I be if I'd grown up here instead of in Scaggsville, MD?
9:13am Cumberland, MD
Back in Maryland's other city, this time in daylight. The spires of the churches glint in the bright morning sun, and life goes on around the train in a Monday sort of way. This town is such a paradox, simultaneously lovely and raw, mixing history and bad taste in nearly equal measure. We've pulled in next to the VFW/American Legion building, the words "FOR GOD AND COUNTRY" emblazoned on its side in foot-high helvetica, and we're creeping along and into the station at a slow enough pace to take it all in at leisure. One of the things Paul and I always had in common was one of our criteria for what we thought of a place--how would it be to be a gay teenager there--and I can't say I'd want to be one here. The fringes at the right are a little too entrenched and too privileged for this town to be welcoming to anyone who doesn't fit neatly in the mold, but I can't help but think it wouldn't necessarily be a bad place to return to once you'd built up the wisdom and fortitude to make your own place in the world. The whole cloth of Cumberland may be burlap, but it's plentiful and sturdy. Maybe I'm just romanticizing the place, but it's hard not to, seeing neighborhood after neighborhood of old victorian houses stacked up on the hillsides like an overly optimistic train garden.
9:38am somewhere in-between
I've moved to the lounge car again in hopes of catching a glimpse of my sad little cabin from the train. I'm not entirely sure that this line is even the one that goes by there, but I figure I'll give it a try at least until I pass Martinsburg without seeing anything familiar.
The windows on the right side of the train are appallingly dirty, and for no obvious reason, because the windows on the other side look fine.
10:02am Orleans Crossroads
Passed through the little townlet (maybe eleven houses) known as Orleans Crossroads, feeling overjoyed to see Clyde's old house and the little road leading to the tracks, and the access road you take to get to my cabin. I watched the DC lawyer's cottage pass, then Light's Farm, then the little brown cottage next to mine, then, almost lost in the sunlight flickering through the trees, my sad little cabin, perched on the hillside looking as run-down as ever, but not, as I'd pessimistically imagined, burned down or otherwise in ruins. The electric bill suddenly dropped to zero a year ago, and I've been anxious about why, skipping the obvious possibilities like the single light I leave on burning out or a tree knocking out the wires. In typical fashion, I've imagined it being burned down by evil teenagers or collapsing from its tilted foundation of railroad ties and slumping into a pile of firewood on the hillside.
I had the direction all wrong on the last trip, though it was dark enough I'd never have found it anyway, but it's a curious feeling to be on one of those Superliners I've waved at over the years. It's almost too miraculous to think that the train that takes me from Maryland to Chicago would run almost through the front yard of the old place, and it makes me want to get up there soon with my tools and raw materials, to keep my Dad's last surviving boondoggle going as a sign of defiance.
10:09am Great Cacapon, WV
Got a great view of the old "big city" that Orleans Crossroads is a suburb to. I've made this trip to Hancock, Maryland a million times, following the chunk gravel road back to the interstate as an alternative to the more baroque route through the mountains. Tracking the Potomac river, a thousand rough campsites assembled from old trailers, shacks, and lean-tos line the river, and at night, bonfires reign over the darkness from most of them. Every few years the river rises and the old beat-up travel trailers end up hanging from the trees. Sometimes the camps get rebuilt, with the old trailer frames still dangling overhead like tribal markers.
10:20am the little airport
There's a tiny airstrip here, immaculately maintained. Dad had always planned to keep an old junky car here, so he could fly up here and just drive the last few miles, but it never came to pass. When I think of his old plane, it makes me feel like a child of great wealth, even if it was just a junky old 1946 Aeronca with no running lights or electrical system. That plane scared the hell out of me, but it was something mystical to Dad, something I'm just getting a handle on now.
10:52am nearing Martinsburg, WV
Just returned from the pocket restroom, which is an experience akin to attempting to pee while competing in a rodeo. That said, I'm amazed at how clean and non-stinky they are.
This region seems to be on the boundary where run-down, but distinct and well-loved houses disappear in favor of late-century tract houses with showy facades and crappy siding everywhere else. I don't have a lot of friends who live in these sort of houses, because their character becomes suspect to me as soon as I find that they willingly live in such wretched places. Maybe I'm elitist, maybe I'm just cantankerous, but give me cracked real plaster walls and scruffy real wood floors any day.
10:55am along the C&O canal
Sometimes it's just a shadow, a barely discerable ditch, and others, it looks like it could be put to use again. At any rate, digging a 190-mile body of water from DC to Cumberland is one hell of a project, our own highly-localized Great Wall of China.
We're in Harper's Ferry now, place of John Brown's denouement, town of red brick and grey stone and everywhere everywhere history, hanging over the place like a cloak.
1:31pm (2:31 DC time) Union Station
Back home, back to the bustle, time to rush through the station, call for my ride, and race for the Metro, heading for home.
8:47pm home
Ensconced in the strange familiar environment I call home, halfway between Baltimore and DC, my house neat and tidy because of my Manhattan Project of housecleaning before my trip. I've just woken from a composite bath/nap sort of thing I undertook hoping to make a smoother transition from slowtime to realtime, and I feel muzzy. The dog seemed pleased to see me, though not as much as I'd have hoped. Must dote on her more in the future, to earn a more deranged welcome happy dance. Everything else seems right, but a bit off-center. I feel like writing more about the train, but am a bit tired and raw, so that'll have to wait.