Page 12 - the NOISE August 2013

It’s been quite a summer. I burned my back swimming in the Verde River and packed for my upcoming month-long trip exhausted. The Tucson Amtrak station bears little difference to a Greyhound station in the morning. I get one last coffee from the downtown coffee shop down the street with all the cute girls. In a couple hours, I’ll be starving hungry, moving eastward on tracks built by exploited, poor immigrants, sailing at the 21st Century equivalent of a snail’s pace. To this day, there is no worker’s comp for railroad employees. The history of this country is written in blood and bone on these rails. I am a tourist. A poor white man in America. It can only get slightly better. The train is late.
The children and families gather by the windows as the minutes in Tucson wind down. I think I’ve selected the right shoes. I feel good.
I would love to see Amtrak prosper. Taking the train is a beautiful thing. I hope what I’ve written reflects that and also offers, both tips for the passenger of the Amtrak, as well as some constructive criticism for the government funded train company.
First of all, Amtrak, you’re f*cking up. Why is it so complicated? Be the American dream the oil lobby has granted you to be. You’ve got this wonderful market to tap into. You can be the savior to all us poor f*ckers who can’t afford gas and would rather eat sh*t dipped razor blades than ever take Greyhound again nor stand in cattle lines at the airport. We want to see the sights and take the train. Like our dad, Woodie Guthrie. But I mean, we’ll buy a ticket. Just make it easy.
There’s a beautiful lady with a pitbull on the train. Before we boarded, I asked her what the Amtrak policy on dogs is, and she said, service dogs only. All the other passengers are also interested in the dog. I am too, but I’m sure she’s sick of it. I give up before I begin.
The train is stopped just east of Benson. Some sort of problem. There’s mountains out there and creosote. The dead grass sparkles in the sun like gold. Fences and phone poles delineate some sort of order. The train is as comfy as my apartment if people walked through my bedroom fairly often. I was thankful for bringing a blanket and pillow as soon as I found my seat. I just trip out on Townes Van Zant coming out of my headphones plugged into my laptop and feel no stress in the world. It unlocks the train and it lurches back into motion. Take these things on the train: Pillow, blanket, beverages, food, entertainment, work, and toothpaste. You’re going to be on the train for a long time. You can take a lot more stuff on the train than an airplane. Some routes don’t even allow you to check baggage.
The stop in Lordsburg, New Mexico has a lot of charm. It looks like Paris, Texas. I wish we could get out at this stop. On one side, there’s El Charro and the Maverick Room looking as old and dusty as a Ry Cooder guitar slide, and on the other there’s the Stagecoach Inn, which requires little additional description. The whole town seems to be crumbling, despite the modern, brightly painted cars, and sure enough a haboob dervishes in the distance.
I stay on the train in El Paso. There’s Texas on the north side of the train, Mexico on the south side. I wonder if anyone was murdered in Juarez today. The barbed wire indicates how the Texans feel about their neighbors. On the El Paso side, there’s Chase, Wells Fargo, and some hotels making Juarez look like a hovel of shacks in comparison. A tale of two cities. It was the worst of times. The sky is a thick soup of blueish gray. There’s not a cloud in the sky. Before the train moves, the smell of El Paso burritos, sold at the station fills the coach train. Let passing those up be the worst decision I make this trip. Don’t make the same mistake. As we get rolling through town, the graffiti and covered up graffiti in different colored paints make me wish I had my camera in hand. Oh yeah, bring your camera. The Western Refining Plant looks strange as we pass by. For some reason, I recall this is where At the Drive In is from. Of course, I’m sure none of those dudes live here now.
Oil fields make way for farmland. The new passenger next to me smells like booze. He’s young, clean cut, friendly, and he speaks perfect Spanish and English. I’m a big hick. Talk to people on the train when you get the opportunity. And don’t be a dick. More on that later.
12 • AUGUST 2013 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us
Western Texas unfolds like a massive giant ancient dry lake. Slowly, it starts to resemble an Ed Mell painting, then goes flat and infinite again. A deer ducks through a barbed wire fence and runs through a field of green brush. I see an eagle with either a long intestine or a ripped up snake hanging from its mouth. I want tequila. Lo quero.
The sun is down by the time we reach Alpine, Texas. Even in the dark, at least from the train station, it exudes a small town charm, not too unlike Flagstaff. I watched the sun set from the café car, reading a book about the Mexican Revolution, and drinking a six-dollar Corona. Amtrak should really stop robbing their hostage clientele. The food is pretty bad, and I could only afford one meal a day if that. I made the mistake of ordering grits as a side.
Sunsets go fast when you’re racing east.
The train is behind schedule. In Alpine, I get the internet for the first time on the trip, on the city’s free internet service, and sneak off a couple emails before it’s back to 20th Century life. (Amtrak, why no wifi?) Somewhere deep in the heart of Texas, I lose phone service for a while.
It’s late at night when I realize the toilets say ‘church.’ I can’t think of a better name for a toilet seat.
I wake up a few times in the morning. The train is moving through a vastly different ecosystem. East Texas is green, lush, and there’s water. I decide to f*ck my budget and see what the breakfast is all about in the dining car. Before I left on my trip, I was supposed to supply myself with food for the trip, which I will surely do during my travels back. They didn’t ask how I wanted my eggs. They came cooked. I mentioned my grits already. My muffin got caught in my throat. The coffee I ran it down with was worse than most gas station coffee. The shebang cost 7.50. I sat with a man and a woman, I assumed mother and son, and didn’t really inquire, when I realized how much disdain they had for the desert they had seen the day before. They didn’t think there was any way we could still be in Texas. We broke down while we were eating, somewhere between San Antonio and Houston. A brake hose. We stopped again, shortly after.
The brake line breaks again and we sit through the morning.
There’s a sunflower plant out my window.
Never thought I’d say this: Houston is beautiful — massive, luscious, and green. It’s bigger
than Phoenix, but of course it actually makes sense that there’s a giant city here. Sugar, rice, beautiful graffiti, firetrucks, and trees. Lots of trees. Unfortunately, the train is behind schedule, we’re not stopping long and there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to get some food.
I spend most of the day reading, finishing the book about the Mexican Revolution and starting a book by Cormac McCarthy I should have read a long time ago. There’s a green beauty to Beaumont, Texas I was not expecting. The train comes out of the city and above the trees for a bit. There are flamingos in the trees. I think I’ve only seen plastic ones. Arizona once looked a bit like this, around the Verde Valley, without the flamingos, from what I understand.
Louisiana spreads out green and wet, with just a few stops before New Orleans.
Lafayette feels like the end of the line, but there’s still a few more hours.
My ass hurts, my sleeping schedule is all wrecked, but otherwise I feel ready to be homeless
in New Orleans for one night.
“Know anywhere with food and internet, that’s walking distance?” It seemed like a reasonable question, but the Amtrak lady looked at me with disdain. She was trying to get out of there, I suppose.
I end up at a sports bar. I order a ten dollar po’boy, one of the best oxymorons I’ve ever heard, their cheapest coldest Pabst, which wasn’t that cheap either, but it was good, so I had two. I’ve had better po’boys outside of New Orleans, at Satchmo’s in fact, which should get this place fined, if not shut down, but their internet was top notch.
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