CAR CRASHES AND TRAIN TROUBLES

I was sitting in the back seat of the car, idly playing with my phone, staring out the window at the receding town of Marion, Illinois, and breathing a sigh of relief at having escaped the family reunion without having been forced to renounce my support for the pinko policies of our president. I definitely wasn’t paying a lick of attention to what was happening in front of the car.

“Uh-oh, this isn’t good,” came Rick's voice from the front seat.

I leaned left to angle for a view of the front windshield. A gray Cadillac with a smashed hood was swerving wildly and heading straight towards us. While I’m not sure if I registered that the driver was slumped in his seat I somehow knew he wasn’t conscious.

The muscles in my neck constricted. Zombies arose in my mind as one possible explanation. I should have braced for impact but I stayed stock still as Rick drove on and then veered right at a crucial moment, pulling the car up on the sidewalk between two telephone poles as the car sped by us. Safe, we turned to see the Cadillac smash into a telephone pole about 100 feet away.

We all heaved massive sighs of relief and Rick made a U-turn to check on the condition of the driver. When we got there two guys had already stopped to open the car door and try to rouse the man. He was an old guy, late 70s-ish, unconscious but alive. The airbag had deployed but there was a thin stream of red technicolor blood down one side of his face. It seemed that the poor fellow had suffered a heart attack or stroke and lost consciousness with his foot on the gas. He seemed to have first hit a business that sold memorial headstones and then veered towards us before the second collision stopped him.

Rick got a blanket out of the guy’s trunk and found some ID to give to the paramedics who arrived within minutes. I put my head on my mother’s shoulder and cried a little.

On our way out of town I remembered to take a picture for Sarah, who shares her last name with the town. Most of it was quite a bit nicer than this sorry place.

The reunion was pleasant and it was good to see the extended family, a big bunch of very friendly people with political views completely contrary to my own. I sobered up with fear on the first night when one of the cousins turned to ask me what I thought about the direction the country was going in. I wouldn’t attribute malicious intentions to anyone – quite possibly they were just curious about probing the logical capabilities of a real live liberal in their midst – but I did feel quite alone and rather under attack. Thankfully it didn’t last long. The next day I identified one group unlikely to debate which party was to blame for the econopocalypse: the under-12 set. I spent much of Sunday bent over coloring books and browsing the more hilarious options in the Mac photobooth with the kids.

My cousin Nora knew something about imovie and suggested we make a film, which, after hitting on voice-overs as our filmic stamp, we did. Here is a cropped version, featuring Danny voiced by sheep, Amanda voiced by Nora, and Dustin voiced by Danny:

I spent the next week in St. Louis with the fam and my giant stack of books. (For the record I read about 8, far short of the goal of 2/day). Meals were eaten, garage sales were perused, floors were sanded. I spent a particularly delightful day and night in the town of Washington, a little old town on the Missouri river where Rick is fixing up a stately brick house built in 1926.

There was some sadness in the trip too. I got the news that a good friend of my fathers passed away from a stroke and on Sunday attended the memorial for my uncle Dave. It was a good time to remember that these functions serve a positive purpose, ritualistically and socially. There were many reunions of people who hadn’t seen each other in decades and much laughter and fond memories.

I boarded the Texas Eagle last night at 8pm, and watched the sun set over St. Louis (and railcars heaped with coal) before the train left the depot.

Once the windows returned nothing but my own dark reflection I turned to drink and book, buying a wee bottle of Dewar’s in the lounge and drinking it on ice while reading contentedly from George Saunders’ CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. I spent a few pleasant minutes trying to decide how to describe the sound and feeling off the train (eventually deciding on rattle/scrape thump-a-thump) and then drifted off to sleep, curled up on my two seats and raised footrests.

I love Amtrak, I really do, but the rails in this country are in a sorry state and it is a rare trip that doesn’t encounter some problem or delay. So I wasn’t entirely surprised when a group of loud and pissed-off travelers came tromping through my carriage at 3am on their way to the observation lounge. It took me quite a while to get back to sleep as I could hear them loudly venting (“they better give us a whole hell of a lot more than free snacks for this”) and reviewing the nights’ events. Turns out the last carriage had come loose and separated from the rest of the train shortly after we left Little Rock. The passengers were trapped inside without air-conditioning or explanation for almost an hour. Finally they were picked up and added to our carriage. In recognition of the inconvenience, there were free snack packs and unlimited free drip coffee in the lounge for the whole next day. Personally I would have given them scotch instead.

This event narrowly beat being briefly woken up by a conductor yelling at the couple in the seats in front of me around midnight: “I SEE what you doin’ there. You betta stop that or you’ll be gettin’ off at the NEXT stop – there are CHILDREN here….. I SEEN you get up when you saw me come in” – apparently my neighbors were trying to join the rail equivalent of the mile high club.

The next day was tremendously pleasant. I moved back and forth between my seat and the adjacent observation car reading and eavesdropping on conversations. Two Texan women with big hair, copious make-up, and genteel manners talked about being trapped in the disconnected train carriage, laughingly recollecting the deep discussions about life they had had during that dark hour. A burly man with tattoos and gold jewelry sat by himself with a large bottle of iced tea and a bag of Werther’s Original’s candy, looking over an Amtrak rail map and swearing aloud. Two boisterous little boys climbed over the seats and swarmed their patient grandfather while engaging in verbal one-upmanship.

“I’m smarter than you”

“No, I’m smarter than YOU”

“grandpa is the smartest person in the world”

“Unh-Uh – GOD is smarter than EVERYONE”

[pause]

“No, I am smarter”

“Not not not not not not not not not…”

“QUIT IT!”

I also observed one of the boys chewing half-heartedly on one of his arms and arguing “We can drink our blood, but we can’t drink our arms.” His companion agreed, adding sagely “we can drink our guts.”

But my very favorite had to be the absurd but strangely compelling “that scared me to my donuts.”

I also enjoyed watching the awkward courtship between a cute hippy girl and a young hipster who spent our layover in Fort Worth smoking outside of my window. Pictures are below.