About two weeks ago, I took an Amtrak train from Arkansas to Los Angeles.
This is kind of a running log of what I experienced.
I boarded the train at 7:06 am out of Texarkana AR. I said goodbye to my mother and grandmother and plopped my bags down on a big blue chair.
The first thing I noticed was the amount of young children on this car. A couple of 3 year olds, a couple of infant twins, and a handful of 8-10 year olds.
The twins belonged to a young woman with a shaved head. She was big, but looked to have only gained the weight recently. She had a swastika tattoo on her right shoulder which she wasn’t making any attempt to hide, and a tattoo on her scalp too blurred to make out. She was pretty but seemed angry and sad.
Her kids were cute, they each sported little Mohawks and camouflage pajamas.
The loudest child was a kid whose name (as near as I can figure) was Andre. He would yell just for yelling’s sake and kept our whole car awake all night with screams and cries. He would run around in his diaper and yell at other passengers, and try to climb up onto the overhead luggage rack. “I want my daddy, I want my daddy” he’d scream on a constant loop. He'd also steal your food.
The skinhead mom loses her temper every 5 seconds. Screaming F words and GD’s at her kids as if they were teenagers. At numerous points over the ride other passengers told her to get ahold of her kids and get ahold of her temper. She didn’t take too well to either suggestions.
At one point when I was neary asleep. Someone was yelling at the skinhead mom- “This train is supposed to be relaxing and joyous” to which she replied “I don’t know where you’ve been, Amtrak is miserable it’s always been miserable”. I couldn't agree more.
Now the mom of Andre is saying “I smell sh*t”. Awesome. So do I.
Most of the trip had just been loud kids, angry moms, angry passengers, and a couple of semi-crazy people talking to themselves. One guy in particular kept alternating between saying “Otis Spunkmeyer has too many calories” and singing Rihanna’s “Take a Bow”.
Early last night the train came to a stop in Temple Texas.
The routine stop soon grew longer and passengers started to wonder what was delaying us. I started to overhear murmurs that a woman was raped on board and that the train had to wait for police to arrive. Sure enough, a group of teenagers who had been riding the train since NY (and had been drinking on the train since NY also) had been involved in an assault downstairs in a dressing room.
A young woman was accusing one of the youn men of rape and the train had to stay in the station until FBI could arrive as Amtrak is federally owned and operated. This caused both excitement and unrest amongst the passengers. People were thrilled by the fact that a crime had been committed in their train (the teenagers were actually passengers on my car) but also incredibly perturbed at the delay. No one seemed concerned about the crime or the victim. Many people had heard that the woman had been assaulted by her boyfriend and they deemed that somehow less deplorable. Otis Spunkmeyer had heard they were looking for a lost cell phone that the woman had in her possession at the time of the attack- so he went searching throughout the train explaining to everyone what he was doing and how he was helping the police investigation.
Earlier that day I had struck up a nice conversation with a gentleman from Illinois in the dining car. For parties smaller than 4 they seat you with other passengers, so I ate my veggie burger with him and an older gentlemant from New England. The older man had to wait until the next station stop just to get up and move back to his seat, the rocking of the train had knocked him down one too many times earlier in the trip.
The middle aged man had just left Illinois where his mother had passed away. He had promised himself that after his Mother was dead he would move to be closer to his two daughters in Texas.
He used to work for Universal in Hollywood and dealt in guest relations. He told me a story about driving Richard Dreyfuss around because his daughter was having a birthday party on one of the soundstages. He said he was on coke for most of his films in the 70's.
He also told me about a phonecall he received once from Eva Marie Saint. Oh man. His roommate in Hollywood was a sound guy who went on to work on "Goodfellas" and numerous Clint Eastwood films. He Told him once that he worked on a picture with Faye Dunaway and Jon Voight and couldn’t decide who the bigger Diva was.
As the train was stopped in Temple I went down to the café to get a hot dog. The middle aged gentleman was there and was himself enjoying a drink and a snack.
I sat down with him and we talked more about other celebrity encounters of his. The café attendant was asking that everyone remain in the café car who had alcohol since she was in trouble for allowing alcohol to somehow get into the hands of minors earlier than night (the kids involved in the assault).
I looked around the cafe, a couple of hispanic men with beers in hand, and another young white guy with a Heineken. In a few moments a young black man came down and ordered a beer. The café attendant wouldn’t serve him and claimed it was because she saw him with the party earlier who was now under investigation.
He called "bullsh*t" on that reasoning and kept saying “I aint with them, I aint with them, it says Samuel Brown on my ticket and that’s all I’m with, Samuel Brown is all I am, I aint them, why aint there names on my ticket?”
He went and got an Amtrak attendant. She came down to the café. The café worker and Amtrak worker explained to the gentleman that they were only serving passengers who were old enough to not be carded. Men and women that were clearly of age.
Samuel Brown was 28, there was a young white guy (no older than 25) nearby sipping a Heineken. The last thing I wanted was for Samuel Brown to see that and freak out. The café worker was white, but the Amtrak lady was black.
He stormed off one last time yelling "bullsh*t" and went back to his seat. I returned to mine and listened in on the woman two seats back explaining what she heard happened concerning the attack. The rape, the teenagers, the alcohol, the missing cell phone, the boyfriend, the rapist, all involved were now in the custody of the Temple police. One woman exclaimed “This is a movie, we must be on film right now, somebody make a movie of this!”.
I thought about it.
The woman who was doing the explaining was a redhead with two redhead toddler daughters who made far less noise than the skinhead babies and Andre. There was also a group of young Hispanic kids who were insanely well behaved. One of them, a 3 year old girl, had to be the prettiest child I had ever seen.
The only thing weird about those kids, was the fact that they sat all three in a row (ages 3, 5, and 10) watching “The Last King of Scoltland” on a portable DVD player.
After 3 hours of waiting in Temple, we started to move again. The train had been investiagated as a crime scene and people were talking about men walking around in blue gloves, digging through dressing rooms and bathrooms.
We stopped a while later and they added cars to the train. It was loud, clanking and clunking for at least an hour. In the morning we were headed in the opposite direction. This meant to the skinhead mom- that we were no longer headed toward Los Angeles. She flipped out, yelled for an attendant and started screaming "I have to get to LA!! I HAVE TO!!". The attendant explained that we were still on track in the right direction, cars were added to the train and we were about to turn our chairs around so we'd be facing the direction we were headed.
Over the course of that day- I started noticing a big man who was becoming more and more intoxicated as he would move about the cars. He said a couple of weird things to me and other passengers and at one point asked if I grabbed a dude's butt that I had just walked by. I hadn't, he didn't believe me.
Late that night we stopped again, more cops came on board. The big man was arrested for drunken and disorderly conduct. He was escorted out of the train kicking and screaming. Teenagers on board were laughing at how "Ghetto" this train had become.
The next morning a black woman stood up and said "I don't know if yall white folk have heard yet, but now that Obama's President- yall need to report to the cotton fields for orientation"
Yikes, I turned behind me to see if the skinhead had heard- she wasn't there. Phew, I guess she ran to the cafe for a bit.
When she did return, someone accused her of mistreating her kids. She started yelling "You don't know me, you don't know us- you're a thief! I'll tell everyone you've been stealing from them!" I have no idea what she was talking about. Neither did anyone else on the train. I kept worrying, is this gonna amount to some race riot on the train? So many arguments, nobody getting sleep, so much anxiety and social tension. I contemplated getting off the train in El Paso- 10 hours from LA. I thought I could rent a car and get there without the freakouts and arrests.
I decided to stick it out, and finally- 55 hours later we arrived. Back in Los Angeles.
I can safely say I will never ride Amtrak again for longer than 10 hours at a time, unless I'm armed- then I'll consider getting on for longer.
