Thursday, March 10, 2005, 4:08pm
Thursday, March 10, 2005, 4:08pm
Except for a handful of other straggling passengers still investigating the new experience, so far the few times I’ve hiked down into the lower Silver Line concourse at Courthouse Station I’ve had the place mostly to myself. However, this afternoon I shared a much more crowded space filed with solemn state troopers and a gaggle of equably somber reporters standing as they might at a graveside. A few curious would-be passengers like me stood at a distance — those of us who just couldn’t pass up a chance to see the governor of the Commonwealth giving a speech about fixing every bridge in the state written for the consumption of a television sound-bite audience.
What better place to pontificate on improved infrastructure than inside a huge shiny new subway station. Though on second though – the main reason for the terrible shape of roads and bridges across the Commonwealth is largely how Big Dig money has been siphoned for years – including money for Big Dig projects such as this very subway station.
I watched as Mitt Romney strode to the podium within a zone of comfort that comes from striding to hundreds of podiums as a rescuer of the Salt Lake City Olympics and in his earlier days as a venture capitalist. Standing bathed within a thoroughly out-of-place glow of camera lights, it was nice to hear some filthy rich guy at least pretending to care about matters affecting something beyond his own portfolio. Because a state can’t really have a foreign policy or print money or invade some other part of world for shadowy or partisan or patriotic reasons, such mundane topics as roads and schools and bridges are what make or break most governors. Nor is it so easy to hide behind the Oz-like curtain of ‘national security’ when making excuses for why some go hungry and sleep in gutters on a cold winters night. Somehow presidents can get away with the empty high-minded and lofty ‘on-message’ baloney that goes with running an entire empire.
Only recently has Mr. Romney begun to practice his own version of Tip O’Neal politics (“all politics is local politics”). Before then he wasn’t getting very far with his own brand of high-minded baloney. If you want votes in Massachusetts politics, it matters most to worry about practical quality-of-life issues and operating state government for the benefit of everyone who lives here. Mouth off pointy-haired vagaries like ‘family values’ and other veiled hot-button topics, and you won’t be long in power.
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We’re rolling through the frozen Allston freight yard. Three cold days have taken their toll. Four days ago I was sensing the Old Man’s demise as the sun beat down while melt-water drained the life from his wintry roots. Today I see only white permafrost — snow from hell sitting there until next winter and perhaps even the beginnings of the next ice age. Today the Old Man is thumbing his nose wide open for all to see.
I noticed a few things more about the Silver Line this afternoon, and of these the first is just how much I really don’t care much about it. This is not because I dislike the subway or have strong negative opinions. It’s more like if I can’t be writing about events as they happen – which is impossible standing aboard a lurching bus – then I am relying too much on my fading memory writing later. I am notoriously bad at remembering details that bring a place to life within a story. I may continue to write about the Silver Line, but it won’t be a fixture of this journal anymore.
Another thing about the Silver Line — having missed the previously bus lending an ear to the governor, I had time to study the power system. Down into the tunnels I could see a pair of overhead trolley wires – so these vehicles are not merely propane fired when above ground, but also DC electric powered through the tunnels as I had suspected earlier.
Lastly, I noticed while aboard the eastbound bus how this bigger version swivels from a joint about two thirds of the way back from the driver, not like the Green Line trolleys that fold at the midpoint. Also the buses appear to swivel vertically as well, not just side-to side like the trains. Perhaps this is done to accommodate abrupt changes in road grade. To make this work, the swivel point has a third axle with a full set of wheels, though how this connects to the undercarriage is not clear from my brief inspection except that it has to be there if that joint is to freely swivel in all directions.
Thinking back some more… echoes from Mr. Romney’s speech were still leaking into the lower tunnels until my own bus arrived – echoes soon forgotten on my way back under the Fort Point Channel to the junction with South Station, off the bus, past the turnstiles, and then through the thin pedestrian traffic of the early rush-hour. At the underground confluence of subway and commuter rail foot traffic where the outside weather has little influence I find Willy. He seems to have found an ideal solution to freezing his ass handing out newspapers along Summer Street.
“Free Boston Heralds… Free Boston Heralds here… Get your free Boston Heralds…”
Willy’s voice is crisp and slightly high-pitched like a hot dog vendor at Fenway – perfect for piercing crowd noise but friendly and inviting without sounding like he’s as loud as he has to be. For a brief time recently Willy took up a spot along the cacophonous Atlantic Avenue just outside the northwest entrance to South Station with its terrific foot traffic and horrendous wind. I suppose a few days spent in the teeth of a Boston winter must have driven him to seek this new subterranean bliss (as though handling out 500 newspapers in two hours away from natural daylight can be described as blissful in any respect).
Perhaps he will return to the streets once the subterranean world returns to its regular hot oven state in July. But until then I’m pretty sure he won’t be heading outside until his daily stack of newsprint is gone.
For so many years I hated this city for its lousy memories. Since working there in recent years I’ve come to know regular people who live and work in this place — and this simple experience has gone a long way towards undermining darker attitudes. Perhaps I should have made this sort of commute a long time ago instead of waiting until I was forced into a desperate last-ditch stab at the job market at the tail end of the most recent tech bubble. Ironically, despite the sense of loss over closing my own business and the end of independent freedom I’d once enjoyed, this job has turned out to be one of the best work experiences now that I work with some of the most interesting people I’ve ever met.
The destination and spaces in between do little to improve my downcast sense of this New England winter. Today Lake Cochituate offers no solace at all where even inlets are frozen solid and covered with blown snow. Once a deep lake is finally able to freeze, it is later equally stubborn at unfreezing since all that water taking so long to create a thermal inversion below 40 degrees will need a lot of warm days and bright sunlight before ice can no longer easily exist. Sea ice unfreezes first, then rivers, then shallow ponds, then finally the deep lakes. That, short of some volcanic activity is the way it always happens.
The Old Man certainly had at least this one blast left in him, and being mid-March, there could be more. These days I simply hope for a break in the weather between blasts. In reality spring does not arrive so much by way of gradual warming but rather as a change in the proportion of bitterly cold days versus warmer days. By mid-March, the lousy days still out-number the nice days two to one. In another few weeks the score will even out, and by late April only a day or two each week are likely to be truly lousy.
The end of winter is not a date on some calendar. It is the day after the last truly cold day before summer sets in for good, and that may not happen in southern New England until April, May or even June.
