The next train connecting was leaving Chicago around 3:00 to
go to New Mexico. It was scheduled to arrive there the next day at 2 p.m., so
it was a 24 hour leg on this trip. I should have known when the sour faced
woman greeted me to take my ticket that this wasn’t going to be as friendly of
a train as the last one. It was a large double decker and she said we had to
sit in the seat she assigned; unlike the last one where we just grabbed an open
seat of our choice. I got into my seat and there was a woman in her early 60’s
sitting next to me. At first she seemed harmless, asking us where we were from.
But then she sat up in her chair on her knees, peered behind her and started
talking to the people there too. She left and came back, beer and nuts in hand
and said” I’m being naughty” and put her tray table down. She leaned in closer
to me with her dyed red hair and started telling me about her life and the Missouri
River. On the other seat in the row across was a clean cut woman with short
cropped hair. She carefully opened some food she brought and took out her cell
phone. She told me she had just been in New York as well, in Chelsea. Then she
said she was on her way to move to Los Angeles to stay in a homeless shelter. A
few rows in front were a young mom and her 2 year old daughter. I had seen them
in Chicago in the lobby. She kept yelling to her daughter” STOP IT, I said SHUT
UP” over and over again. I had been thinking what a horrible woman she was and
was happy that I only had to encounter her for a minute. Or so I thought. Way
up in the front of the car were two middle aged, gray and slightly round coke
heads. They stayed up all night talking loudly with newspapers strewn
everywhere. When I woke up at 8 am the next day one of them was still awake and
was talking to a woman next to him. You could see the look of horror in her
face from the smell of beer coming off him but she was just too nice to walk
away. I spent most of this train in the observation car. I was happy that the
nazi seat assignment enforcers let me go to another car to sleep that night
though. All in all, I was still happy I took the train. Here is what it looked
like along the way:
