Rail Retreat, Chapter 2 -- Evening of a Day of Extremes

It hasn’t taken long to notice that trains don’t pull into the center of town – except those towns small enough to have nothing but a center, whose memories are stronger than their imaginations. If tracks used to line the nerve centers of civic commerce, now they form the industrial entrails of a community’s underside. Railway stations share their neighborhood with freight cars and transport trucks, warehouses and vacant lots; barbed-wire enclosures piled with the twisted metal remnants of whatever was useful that has already been cannibalized for something else, rather than the hotels and restaurants, services and shops that once upon a time welcomed de-boarding passengers. If a city were a body, I have no doubt what part of its anatomy would be the train station. The pleasantries of urban enclaves have long since migrated in more scenic, quieter and less grimy directions. The platforms make for useful exercise tracks when a stop is long enough to permit it; but it is Spartan, utilitarian, mechanical surroundings.

The conductor came on the PA earlier in the afternoon to chastise smokers. The train, like other forms of public transportation, is non-smoking by government regulation. Signs are clearly posted. Reminders are courteously announced. But the frustration in the conductor’s voice, noting that “we are well aware that some are going to the lower level to smoke” and that “everyone can smell it” betrayed his loss of patience. He reiterated the rules, and looked ahead to the next available smoking stop.

On the one hand, I cheered his announcement. I hate the smell, and while I hadn’t in this case been bothered by it (perhaps the offenders were on a different car), I don’t want any noxious migration. As we pulled into Albuquerque for an hour-long stop, several virtually leapt onto the platform to light up.

I wonder about my own voices – addictions – that perhaps are subtler but no less distracting and controlling – and potentially offensive. What are those attachments in my own life so compelling that they cause me to risk censure and eviction at the next available station? To what have I given myself, and to what ends will I go to accommodate its demands?

As the “all aboard” was sounded, I noticed several final and impassioned drags on the platform before the butts were stubbed and the soothed hopped back on board. I’ll keep them, too, in my prayers, hoping that at least a few of them take the time to remember me in theirs.