A History of Rails and Waiting - An “El” Train Diary
Recently a buddy of my brother’s relayed a breakdown of storytelling he’s picked up on over the years:
Start every tale with “So there I was…” and end it with “Then I said…” as a recipe for a memorable yarn.
Let’s put that protocol to use, shall we?
So, there I was… in Chicago.
✶
Chicago, Illinois, USA. City of light, city of rivers, city of wind.
No way around it without good old public transit. Besides that, you’ll never really see, feel its size, it unless you ride the train.
Move between the Red and Blue line subway through one of the most frighteningly claustrophobic places on Earth—the lowermost tunnel downtown at the Jackson stop. God help you if you drop anything as you spelunk in a straight line thru pissed-on, moldy tiled walls while the long florescent lights guiding you along imbue a further wordless message of hi-wattage gloom.
However your struggle may be rewarded as your board the next steel caterpillar to your destination and hear those longed-for ever-sweet words from the conductor:
“Attention Riders, this train will now run express…”
✶
Commence bad joke:
“Sir, does this train go to the Loop?”
“No, it goes ‘beep-beep.’”
The 35th/Archer Avenue stop on in Bridgeport on the south side was a 15 minute walk from the apartment I shared with the man I’d moved to the city with. Before we would have sex on the Pink line later as the summer took over, in that formative and scintillating first winter together in a new place, many conversations and kisses were exchanged in the back of the rearmost car on the Orange line. Our feet up against the walls near the window, watching the tunnels, concrete and brick landscape curve away. Tubes of track unraveling themselves back and back, into the past.
✶
In those first days before I had a smartfone with maps I would get on the elevated rail and ride to the ends and back just to see what was hiding in plain sight. One of those days the incredibly decked out Christmas train featuring Santa on his sleigh in an open air car swooped in off the Purple line. Turns out, no matter what’s going on in your life, it is impossible to be in a bad mood on the Holiday train.
✶
To remember the train in any fashion is to recall the endless demon winter. Putting on layers to go out into the frozen wasteland of it. To accept the slashing and cutting and barely-acceptable mess of it thru clouds of exhales and heavy booted footfalls.
Another time at the Roosevelt stop, high up in the open air with a sweeping view of the street and looking out toward the lake, I read something in the daily city paper about there being more colder days logged on record in Chicago than in Antarctica the year prior. I silently thought to myself “What in god’s name am I doing here, punishing myself like this?”
I proceeded to get on the Green Line west and take out my frustrations on an idiot who was bothering commuters trying to solicit signatures to get on a ballot. I stopped him as he was turning his spiel toward me and twice more as he tried to engage two other passengers. “Do it on the platform like everyone else, Joe.”
✶
When you live in Chicago long enough, some days it’s fun to try to see how close you can come to getting punched without actually making it happen. It’s hard to forget giving your fellow man, or concomitant panhandling ridiculous and mentally ill commuter, shit for smoking, or handing you papers while claiming to be deaf, or moving in and blocking the exits with endless baskets of eviction laundry. Or, in the case of one fine and freezing New Year’s Eve into New Year’s Day (free rides until the AM every year), piling into one side of the car with a coughing, protesting and wild loud bunch to avoid both the smell and the presence of a puke pile just inside the door the size of a two-top.
Not too long after that I got my friend Jaz, who’d grown up in the suburb of Berwyn fer petesakes, to cross from one car to the next via the emergency doors at each end while the train was in motion. We had no reason whatsoever to move seats, but she’d never done it before and the cheap thrill put a wide smile on her face and lights in her eyes I couldn’t resist indulging.
✶
Another way I got around the city like a bandit was via bicycle. I tore thru the neighborhoods on days with decent weather like some punk rock mayor on a pleasure mission.
One day I was jockeying down Milwaukee Avenue in Wicker Park, catching up to a pair of latino young buck nerds on fixed gear rides. They passed a Ventra card, blue and shining, freshly dropped, on the street. I stopped to pick it up just as they double backed on me.
“We saw it first.” was their game. “Sure.” I said, knowing I didn’t really need the card as I had two of my own. But I was feeling playful. “Guess the amount on it and whomever is closest I’ll give it to.” The shyer one of the bunch seemed like he really needed it.
We blasted up like shots from a cannon to the Western station off the Blue line in the direction we had been going. Something like 4.6 dollars in fare remained. Before I disappeared back into the bright urban day, I handed it over to the younger one and he blushed, probably thinking I might not surrender it after all.
Then I said “Here ya go. Happy riding.”