One late spring day, my husband and I boarded the California Zephyr bound for Chicago. We couldn't board at Union Station in Denver as that building was being renovated. What had been turned into the train station was a low concrete structure just across the street from Union. If Denver International Airport announces itself in great tent tops that seem to float across the western sky, the temporary train station hunkered down, crouching against Coors Field.
It was crowded when we arrived. People sat surrounded by their luggage, and their food: water bottles, soda, fruit, chips and sandwiches. Nothing appeared to satisfy the airline carry-on three-ounce limit above which, one assumes, everybody dies.
I listened for the ominous warnings emanating from hidden speakers: Not only is the moving walkway ending, but unaccompanied luggage will be seized and, one suspects, detonated by the bomb unit.
I listened for the subliminal message just below the airport broadcast, the message that we should all, “Be afraid; be very afraid.”
Instead, I saw a single sign. It is my favorite sign from our endless war on terror, from terror's endless war on us. It read:
If You See Something,
Say Something.
It’s Probably Nothing.
Amtrak had me at “It’s probably nothing.”
No one searched our luggage. No one swiped my packed underwear with an explosive detecting eye make-up remover pad, or, at least, what looks to me like an explosive detecting eye make-up remover pad.
We shuffled to our sleeping car and settled in our “roomette.” Ventures to the bathroom, at the end of the car, and to the dining room, two cars over, revealed compartment after compartment of people, sitting…and reading. Having conversation. Looking out the window at the eastern plains of Colorado. Playing cards.
Because there was no Internet reception and only sporadic cell phone reception (Thanks, government inefficiency!) passengers were forced to fall back on non-battery operated pursuits.
There were no televisions, broadcasting minute-by-minute misery, and no piped-in music to mask the sounds of the wheels on the rails as we made our way into Nebraska and night.
Meals on the train were at tables set for four. For my husband and me, that meant we shared three meals with strangers before we pulled into Chicago on the following afternoon.
We ate with an Amtrak employee who discussed government subsidies for various means of transportation with my husband and possible future western rail lines with me and advised us both on menu choices.
We ate with an English couple, she an engineer and he an administrator with the British National Health Service. They were traveling by train from San Francisco to New York City. They’d opted for private health insurance and did not sing the praises of the single-payer system.
We ate with a woman whose speech was stroke-slowed, but whose thoughts were bright and quick. An Iowa native, she had returned home for good after many years away. She was a follower of Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan and an advocate for foods, recognizable as comestibles rather than chemicals, and places where people root and remain.
The conversations were not always easy and there were as many points of disagreement among us as agreement, but our conversations were always civil, as well as lively. We learned some things and continued the conversations even after our tablemates parted and it was just the two of us talking about whether a city building an airport counted as a government subsidy of the airline industry.
I’m not sure why bringing a group of people into the closed space of an airport or an airplane is atomizing, while bringing a group of people into the closed space of a train station or train observation car is not. I can only reflect on my experiences in both settings.
Perhaps it is the connection to the outside world. At one point during a meal we all sat and watched in wonder as we crossed the Mississippi River. Sailors on a barge waved at us as we passed. I have made that crossing many times, by car and by train, and I never tire of the sight. On a plane, only the captain’s voice alerts me to what I could not otherwise identify far below.
Perhaps it is the speed at which a train travels. I can watch the towns passing, watch as the farmland of Illinois bleeds into the exurbs and then the suburbs and finally the city of Chicago. It is not the same sense of dislocation one feels after being sealed in a tube and whisked above the clouds from one place to another with nothing but sky in between.
Perhaps it is the experience of sleeping in close proximity, all of us vulnerable, barefooted and bed headed as we pass on the way to the toilet. Perhaps it is sharing meals with strangers.
Perhaps it’s the announced assumption of the official sign in the station. Yes, it says, we are strangers, and so initially suspicious of one another. But we’re going to share a journey together and will most likely discover along the way that we mean no harm and may even intend good.
So, if you see something, say something. But it’s probably nothing.
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