Friday, December 17, 2004, 8:17am
Friday, December 17, 2004, 8:17am
In Framingham, various boxcar vintage float past my window until our train reaches the old concrete warehouse just west of Farm Pond. Except for a small strip of open water at the foot of Mount Waite the entire pond is glazed in powder from a brief snowfall last night. The snow is just thick enough to whiten the ice, perhaps a fat snowflake thickness in all.
At Framingham Station we board the usual stragglers who missed the earlier local and we are soon underway again, rolling slowly across Route 126 with a view to the old downtown commercial district sunlit and sparkling. At Dennison Crossing the train yields to some situation I cannot see – very likely cars stacked up and sprawled across the tracks.
Of the 500 or 600 people killed each year by trains in this country, a fair number die in their cars stuck on the tracks where nobody ahead or behind can give them room to move away. Most of these drivers stopped obliviously with plenty aforethought possible – stopping square atop the railroad crossing without considering the railroad tracks at all. Crawling through town our MBTA commuter train might stop quickly enough to avoid a collision, but not all trains can stop in time.
At Lake Cochituate I notice more ducks paddling like yesterday – perhaps a dozen, though I suspect these may not be ducks at all, seeing as most of their bodies are submerged. More likely these are cormorants. I haven’t seen them diving underwater or popping to the surface randomly – their trademark activity – so for now notion of cormorants will remain only a working hypothesis.
Partway across the lake farther to the east more than a dozen seagulls loaf at the edge of an ice shelf. The ice is white until the last foot where wave action has melted what little snow might have been there. Where the open water begins and the glossy frozen ice ends is roughly noticeable, but from a passing train window I can’t say exactly where the transition happens.
Beyond Wellesley Square we roll behind old depot buildings long since converted with newer paint and trim to other uses from their older days transceiving rail freight. A lumberyard has taken some of these buildings, but instead of receiving wood via the railroad side the wood arrives the same way as the customers via some unseen street-side doorway.
“Back Bay Station will be next,” Frank announces over the intercom in a perfunctory voice. With Norm no longer running the back half of this 8:07 train I hear none of the old public-address banter, and if I want some morning entertainment I’ll need to sit closer to the front where Frank holds court. Notwithstanding Frank’s expertise as a conductor or his entertainment value, I don’t sit in the lead cars. Nearest to the South Station concourse on arrival these seats are mostly filled by the time I’m boarding at Ashland Station – and key to a tolerable train commute is having a decent seat.
Traffic on Route 128 is the picture of efficiency this morning, belying the truer nature of this road infamous for its epic traffic jams and equal lack of observable explanation. A total jam-up can start when a cigarette is flicked from a window to create a shower of distracting sparks alarming other drivers just enough to touch their brakes. Soon the rippling effect of brake lights propagates until the most fearful drivers slow excessively, which then lowers the road’s throughput capacity far below the actual traffic level.
Reduced capacity can easily clog any flowing system in a downward death-spiral. Once smooth laminar flow ends chaotic turbulence takes over as – in the case of route 128 – drivers darting for open lanes, cutting each other off, and jamming their brakes to avoid the worst of the maniacs. In such chaos the whole process slows further and further in a chain-reaction of events lowering capacity to where a bike path would be of greater use, and the mess is only untangled once enough cars leave the highway to allow a restart of laminar flow an hour or two after the end of the rush hour.
At any rate, aboard this inbound train with its own sort of traffic dynamics, we are almost to the Allston rail yards. Across the Pike I once again notice the green-glass-façade of a three story building taking up an acre of expensive real estate – still hoping to land a biotech tenant. Today the ‘For Rent‘ sign is gone, and with no evidence of occupation, have they given up? Has a lease been signed? And most importantly – do I really care either way?
At Boston University we roll past what really is a new hockey arena where the BU Terriers team will play their first game tonight. When I began this commute two years ago the concrete footings were being poured and now, as with so much about the city, it seems as though that building has always been there.
As much as I would like to keep construction change all straight in my mind, I find it more than reasonably hard to imagine the previously empty spaces than to simply accept the present city as it now stands.
The only Universe is the one right now, and it requires significant effort to synthesize an image of how it once was – or might one day become.
As we lumber under I-93 steam pours from the old power plant near South Station. Except for this manmade cloud, like yesterday the air is resplendently clear, though not nearly as cold – feeling more like the winter days of northern Arizona than in southern New England.
Or maybe I’m just getting used to the cold.
