Congress, Don’t You Dare Derail Amtrak
Dear Congress: I know you’ve heard this before, but now I really mean it. It’s time to get your act together and salvage what we have left of our passenger rail system before too many more generations of Americans grow up without ever having witnessed our nation’s “amber waves of grain” from any place other than a bumper-to-bumper, pollution-saturated Interstate. You know, the place where Dad swears at semis, Mom referees backseat brawls, and Rover comes up borderline brain-damaged from an overdose of recirculated exhaust fumes.
Let’s face it, folks, even the miracle of mirror-image, easy-access outlet malls has got to pall with time. Are we willing to forgo a view of our country’s “fruited plains” and “purple mountain majesties” for a ribbon of tarmac lined with lookalike shopping opportunities? Where the only way we can tell one state from another is by the return address on a fistful of credit card receipts?
Highways are boring!
Cars are boring!
Trains are not boring.
Put yourself in this picture. It’s early afternoon as you pull out of Chicago, but instead of fighting traffic on the Tri-State, you’re kicked back and topside on an Amtrak double-decker lounge car with picture windows all around, bound for points west. Shoeless, beverage of choice in hand, you’re feeling mighty relaxed as the Illinois countryside begins to slide by. You hardly blink an eye when Junior starts jumping around like a bullfrog on a hot lilypad and hollering, “I gotta’ go. NOW!” Smugly, you remind him the train doesn’t have to stop for him to pee.
And while you’re bending an elbow to pat yourself on the back for a stroke of genius, think about this. There are no shopping malls on trains. So as I figure it, there is absolutely no way the family can spend itself into credit card overload while the wheels are still turning.
By dinnertime you will have crossed the Wisconsin-Minnesota border and just before dark, the outskirts of the Twin Cities slips into view. There’s even time for a stroll on the depot platform.
About 2:30 in the morning, you’ll be stopping in Fargo, N.D., but not to worry. Snug in your berth, there’s little chance you’ll be running into the pregnant sheriff or the goofy guy with the wood chipper.
Sunrise at Devils Lake, breakfast around Minot, lunch halfway through Montana and cocktails and dinner in Glacier National Park. And if that’s not exciting enough, try breakfast the next morning with a spectacular view of Mount Hood.
Congress, I ask you, doesn’t it make more sense to encourage rail travel than to build more highways to accommodate more cars to emit more pollution?
And what about stress? Highways are full of strange folks, not all of them sober and many of them armed.
Airports? Might as well queue up in the stockyard chutes for all the personal and preferential treatment you can expect there.
The trains have it. No rush, no push, plenty of time to sit back, relax and maybe meet a new friend. As my father did many years ago in a dining car bound for San Francisco.
Seated across the aisle was a well-dressed, distinguished, white-haired gentleman having dinner and chatting with his traveling companion - a stuffed, toy lamb. My astonished father watched from the corner of his eye as dinner was served. It was dinner for two - including red wine and chateaubriand. Needless to say, old Dad was confounded. He said he’d seen some pretty strange things in his 30 years of rail travel, but this was definitely one of a kind. He later asked the dining car steward about it.
The gentleman, the steward told him, was a congressman from Idaho and a regular passenger between Washington, D.C., and Boise. My father, being a generous sort, suggested that maybe the lamb was the result of a lost election bet. The steward said no. The lamb had been traveling with the congressman for years.
My father, a World War I veteran and a resolute patriot, was nonplussed. He told us the story a few days later at the dinner table expressing concern for what might be going on in Washington. My mother said she thought it was nice that everyone on the train was polite.
Fifty-some years later, I can’t help wondering what would happen to a guy buying two airline tickets and ordering two first-class meals - one for himself and the other for his traveling companion - a stuffed lamb. Airport security would have him on the first flight to the funny farm.
The railroads have been good to you, congresspeople, so why not return the favor? No so-called civilized nation should be without a passenger rail service. How about we make a deal? If you’ll save our trains, we’ll tolerate another two years of your foolishness.
xxxx