Thursday, November 18, 2004, 8:25am
Thursday, November 18, 2004, 8:25am
Once again just as we are underway rolling inbound from Framingham Station the outbound Framingham local rumbles to a halt at my window. From here the world passes without internal comment until Wellesley Square where we drift beneath an overpass – perhaps Weston Road, but it’s been too many years to remember road names this far from home.
Too quickly we arrive at Wellesley Farms Station, which in my daze – and in reality – is not very far beyond Wellesley Hills. Newton arrives, and soon thereafter a windowless white façade and giant black microphone signifying the WCRB radio studios. Farther east we roll beneath a ten story hotel straddling the Pike at Exit 17, passing through a tunnel long enough to warrant several permanent street lights. And less than a mile later we crisscross under the Pike where I can see the highway on this side of the train. I’m tempted to put forth all sorts of ways to advocate train riding to those laboring along the Pike – maybe an electronic billboard on the side of the carriages … “Stuck in traffic today? We’re not!” But for now I prefer the extra elbowroom, and as long as the MBTA can afford to run the trains, I’d just as soon they ran them half-empty.
Back Bay Station reeks of burning diesel fuel. Though more than usual, this is always the case to some extent. The tunnel is nearly a mile long, poorly ventilated, and constantly traversed by diesel locomotives and Pike-borne tractor-trailers flowing through a loosely connected tunnel running in parallel.
My childhood memories of the city include these sorts of diesel fumes mixed with the once-ubiquitous cigarette smoke of that time and the faint backdrop of the sea. Now in my middle years when rare puffs of tobacco and diesel smoke arrive atop the 1899 bridge or along some other sea-side walkway – those old memories return. Every city has its smell. New York its steam pipes. Seoul its rotting Kimchi.
