Partying on Amtrak

By Maralyn Lois Polak

When you take a 28-hour train-ride between New Orleans and Philadelphia on Amtrak’s Crescent, as I did, several days before the great derailment, you can get in touch with a different America.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Solo travelers don’t stay that way for long. To create a kind of instant community-on-wheels, Amtrak seats strangers together in the dining car, and if you’re kinda shy, like me, by the end of the meal, you may become gregarious, in spite of yourself. For my first train dinner – I don’t think I’d ever dared venture into the club car before – they served the best crab cakes I’ve ever eaten, chunky and golden brown, over actual fried green tomatoes.

With regional specialties where possible, the food has its delicious moments. Plus, grits for breakfast. Scrumptious bacon and Smithfield ham. Veggie plates for culinary individualists. And even half-priced “Little Conductor” portions for kids.

On the ride down, I meet “Lee,” a master plasterer from Brooklyn, a fine restoration craftsman headed back home to Mississippi for a family funeral after originally moving north a decade earlier to seek his fortune as an actor and producer. Though he’s wearing a gay-oriented T-shirt, he proclaims his heterosexuality, declaring he’s a straight guy with a collection of unusual T-shirts. I admire his innocent bravado while wondering what the right wing would make of his LeatherMaster tee.

Lee introduces me to “Lonnie,” an authentic tug-boat pilot with many picturesque Bayou adventures including going frogging and squirrelling during his youth. Though Lonnie had worked on boats all over the world, he’d never taken a train before and is so dazzled by the experience he’s planning to bring his 12-year-old son along on his next rail trip.

Lonnie and Lee become my traveling companions for part of the ride down. After sharing life stories, naturally we turn our attention to saving Amtrak – how we’d boost ridership by making trains more alluring for long-distance travelers – if we were in charge.

Why not have movies, music, television, radio? Some trains we saw already have TV monitors. And how about an adult-only Casino Car re-enacting a Wild West gambling scenario?

Someone must have been listening, because ironically, a few hours later, passengers are invited to join an Amtrak-organized bingo game in the cafe offering two free dinners later in the club car, Amtrak blankets and smaller prizes from the snack bar.

I haven’t played bingo since my New Jersey supermarket cashier days. Sitting across from me is George, a sweetly friendly hazel-eyed Georgia black man loving his first train ride as he chaperones his teen-age son’s church group to the Big Easy. Though I don’t win at bingo, I have fun, surrounded by an exotic bunch of travelers of varying ages and ethnicities enjoying a festive, party atmosphere, the cares of the world temporarily suspended.

Later, across the aisle from me, a sick little girl, flushed and feverish from something like bronchitis, sprawls in sleep, taking up an entire seat, her chatty white-trash mom from Slidell so oblivious to the child’s moans and labored breathing, I feel compelled to give the little girl my spare bottle of water. In return, I get her bronchial cold, which assails me the day after I return home, where the last few weeks of weather range from 37 to 98 degrees.

That night, my first back in Philadelphia, right before midnight I suddenly hear an incredible roaring, something mechanical, something awful, descending toward the small houses in my downtown neighborhood. One after another, our back yards light up. Of course, I am certain it’s Armageddon, terrorism, The End.

Before I dial the police or kiss my cat Hobey goodbye, I run outside to find out what’s happening. Most of my neighbors are clumped on the sidewalk. Turns out a police helicopter is trailing some miscreant and shining spotlights into our yards. The cops had knocked on the door of my neighbor Bruce, who answered, naked and asleep, and they shinny up his roof, eventually catching the guy the copter was tracking.

So much excitement for one night! After the police finally leave, three people standing in front of my house using a cellphone on the street in the dead of night, their car illegally plunked in the middle of the block in a no-parking zone, refuse to leave. “Wow, ” they say, “what a party.”

Time to sell the house.

Maralyn Lois Polak

Maralyn Lois Polak is a Philadelphia-based journalist, screenwriter, essayist, novelist, editor, spoken-word artist, performance poet and occasional radio personality. With architect Benjamin Nia, she has just completed a short documentary film about the threatened demolition of a historic neighborhood, "MY HOMETOWN: Preservation or Development?" on DVD. She is the author of several books including the collection of literary profiles, "The Writer as Celebrity: Intimate Interviews," and her latest volume of poetry, "The Bologna Sandwich and Other Poems of LOVE and Indigestion." Her books can be ordered by contacting her directly.
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