Monday, January 31, 2005, 2:42pm
Monday, January 31, 2005, 2:42pm
I am riding face-forward on the north side of this monstrous and mostly empty train – empty even with the first three cars blocked off to concentrate the passenger load.
Norm is conducting today – not because he has returned to handle one of my commuting-hour rides, rather because I am rolling west aboard a mid-afternoon train.
I’m aboard to see how my mom is doing. From the Framingham hospital she called my brother earlier today and also left a message on our machine. We’ve since pieced together that she may have pneumonia and will need to stay in the hospital a few days until they get her headed in the right direction.
It’s still winter out there, but seeing the world well-lit on an outbound train brings me ahead a few months to when the 6:05pm train will be running in broad daylight.
Hope can sometimes arise in the most unlikely places.
Not a cloud can be seen above this wintry scene and though that normally would imply very cold air, the temperature is warm enough so that plowed and shoveled surfaces are wet from snow melt.
“Newtonville!”
Ah yes… indeed this is a local train where people trickle off at each stop.
Outside I read “NO WAR” emblazoned in white spray paint upon a stout retaining wall, and it occurs to me that many small steps have pulled us thus far into Iraq.
What of those steps yet to come?
Perhaps our government will one day admit that they’re up their gonads in this one, and in such an unlikely event we can then address the wasted dollars, tarnished national credibility, and irreplaceable lives. On the other hand, it may well be that we’ll turn Iraq into a functioning democracy based upon the American model. This, in fact, may have been the strategic objective all along and the dozens of reasons hurled out thus far were mere fabrications to provide cover for a worthy objective that nobody would have deemed achievable if laid on the table from the start. At this point no one can say what will happen, and though it seems nearly impossible upon first inspection, in the end we very well may succeed in creating an Iraqi government just like our own––secretive, scheming, unilateral, and operating outside its own laws with impunity and marginal oversight.
Of course, in this there is nothing new. Such, to some extent, has always been the case – no matter the political parties or their political agendas.
“Wellesley Farms!”
Norm isn’t even bothering with the intercom since he’s riding herd over just this one carriage. Instead, he bellows from the common area where his voice carries down to this lower level and upstairs into the peanut gallery overhead. Wellesley Hills is now just a frog jump from the Farms and for this reason the train lumbers to perhaps 40 MPH before throttling back without ever reaching a steady cruising speed.
The approach of Wellesley Square awakens several more would-be pedestrians readying their escapes, some with suitcases on wheels in tow. Maybe a few of these suitcases are headed for dorm rooms at Wellesley College. Though that is just a guess, and out the window I see how most of the recently departed are not of college age, so I’m blowing smoke again – supplying details that I do not possess from the wellspring of my poor imagination.
With nothing much to do between stops Norm is talking golf, which is a fair amount of what he talks about when all is shipshape aboard a train under his command. Before becoming a conductor he was a scratch golfer and resident pro at some nearby country club – so he knows what he’s talking about.
At Natick Station I’m beginning to feel fidgety. The Framingham stop looms, and though the train will stay there for a while before making its return trip to South Station, I feel the urge to ready myself for a quick exit. Trains are comfortable. Trains are generally peaceful. Trains are fairly reliable. But after riding a train 800 miles a month for more than two years, I’m always more than happy to leave a train at the stop of my own choosing.
