My ticket was on the evening train. After slaking my thirst at the bar that offered the Basque food, I went across the street into the station to wait. In Fresno Amtrak uses the old Santa Fe depot, apparently its interior not much altered from years ago, except for the addition of such modern items as a video monitor that shows the arriving trains, and an electronic ticket printing machine.
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| "The [Fresno] station was once the Santa Fe's Valley Division Headquarters, and was expanded or renovated nine times between 1908 and 1985." WP |
The train in fact arrived about sixty-five minutes behind schedule The cars streamed through the window. I went outside as the massive moving river of metal was screeching to a halt, its two-story passenger cars sliding to a gentle halt. like a giant aluminum wall that had slid into place out of nowhere.
This was not the sleeper train yet---I would have to make a transfer---so I simply climbed into the nearest open door, then I squeezed up the narrow steps with my GoLite Jam to the find an open coach seat on the upper level.
Wikipedia tells me that on the San Joaquin these are the "California cars," which are "bi-level, high-capacity passenger cars owned by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans)."
Upstairs it was already crowded. I didn't feel like sitting next to anyone yet. I had to go into the neighboring car via the second-story door to find an open pair of seats, in the second row from the front, next to the lavatory. This last fact made it not the most appealing location, but a quick look around the car revealed this was my only opportunity to sit by myself next to the window.
I stowed my large pack on the nearby rack, keeping my little day pack with my laptop with me in my seat. The row in front of me was the type in which two pairs of seats faced each other across a table. In the seat directly in front of me there was a lone bald white guy in his thirties wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a gold chain. He appeared absorbed in listening to music on his smartphone using large earbuds in his ear.
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| "Service began on March 5, 1974 with one round-trip per day between Bakersfield and Oakland and a bus connection from Bakersfield to Los Angeles. Amtrak chose the Santa Fe route over the Southern Pacific, citing the higher speed (79 miles per hour vs. 70 miles per hour) of the Santa Fe and freight congestion on the Southern Pacific. The decision was not without controversy, with Sisk alleging that the Southern Pacific lobbied the Nixon Administration to influence the decision."(WP) |
As we waited for the train to begin moving, a young woman---white, in her early twenties, wearing glasses, with a slightly portly figure and visible tattoos on her bare arms---stood up at the front of the car, next to the lavatory door. She announced to the car in a very loud raucous voice that she was looking to have some fun.
Even though she was white, when she spoke she used a California Hispanic accent, like a Mexican gangster, and waved her arms around like a rapper on stage.
I slunk down behind seat in front of me, leaning against the window so as to be mostly out of her vision. Soon the train lurched into motion, and with great groaning of metal, it began trundling down the tracks north of downtown. I watched the neighborhoods of north Fresno go by---the industrial areas and messy backyards of bungalow houses that gave way to apartment complexes. The tracks crossed north Blackstone about where I had caught the city bus a week before.
We crossed through Fresno following one of the canals through the old fig orchards. There was still about an hour of daylight to enjoy the scenery outside. Once we got out in the open countryside, the view across the open fields from the train tracks was sublime. It was refreshing not to be on the highway.
In the meantime the woman who had stood up in front of the car had apparently found a playmate for the ride. She had latched onto the guy sitting alone at the table in the row in front of me, the one wearing the hooded sweatshirt and the gold chain. She somewhat invited herself to sit in the seat across the table from him. Unfortunately this meant she was broadcasting her loud voice right at me.
Like her, the guy was white but also spoke in an affected Central Valley Mexican accent.
They exchanged pleasantries. She was going to Merced---about an hour and a half away in the Valley. He was going to Turlock, a little further down the line.
"You're from Modesto?" he asked her hopefully, as if trying to start a conversation.
"Yeah," she muttered, uninterested in his patter, but playing along.
"I went to high school there," he said. "Well, just outside of Merced, actually. But I know Merced really well."
"What high school did you go to?" he added, churning the wheels of the conversation.
She demured. "Uh, I didn't go to high school there."
He attempted further biographical probing, almost mechanically driving to the next obvious question. But she was very taciturn in her answers, going along with his interrogation with a spirit of impatient resignation. It was clear she had made up some it as she went along, but also that she didn't want to tell a string of unnecessary lies.
"I wasn't much in the system," she told him, at one point.
But he was delighted that he had discovered a vein of connection between them that he could exploit in order to keep talking to her. I was struck by how charming it was, that he was obvious this old-style pick-up effort was not at all necessary in this case.
"I'm going to sit next to you," she announced brusquely, during a lull in the conversation. After getting his assent, she immediately came around and pushed in beside him, on his side of the table.
It turns out they both had kids. They were in fact both on their way to see them---or at least he was. She implied vaguely that she was doing as much. Soon they were comparing photos on their smartphones.
At this point I decided I'd had enough of listening to her loud voice, and of being so close to their conversation, so I went into the nearby lounge car with the intention of buying a cup of coffee and watching the scenery from there.
But the jerking motion of the train made it hard to stand in the long line at the snack bar, and the seats there were not so appealing. So when the conductor announced that we were about to make a stop in Madera, I decided it was best to go back to my seat and occupy it, lest someone take the one by the window.
By then the couple were not talking as loud. In fact they were mostly silent. At one point the guy took his windbreaker and placed it over the space between them,. Then about ten minutes later the young lady stood up and stepped inside the lavatory and closed the door. A few minutes later the guy got out of his seat and, with only the slightest condescension to a glance around him, opened the lavatory door and went inside.
During the ten minutes they were in there, no one else came to try to use the lavatory. It should be noted that the loud noise of Amtrak trains in motion spared me, and everyone else in the car, from having to hear anything that might have been transpiring inside.
Finally the door opened and the guy emerged, sitting in his original seat. Then after a few minutes the young woman came out nonchalantly. She said a few words and then wandered off down the aisle to talk to other people on the train.
Not long after that we pulled into Merced. Just before the train stopped, the young woman came back and sweetly asked the guy if she could put her number into his cell phone. When she asked him this, for a moment her gangster pose was gone, and she sounded like an innocent girl making arrangments for an ice cream date.
After she left, a couple other young people came up to the front of the car and wanted to talk to the guy. A young man and a young woman begged him to come and hang out with them at their table in the other part of the car. He went off with them for the rest of the ride.
When the train arrived in Turlock, he came back to his seat to get his stuff. Before he left he pulled his hood up over his head and straightened his gold chain, using the train window as a mirror. From the window I saw him standing on the platform below, outside the little station, with several people he seemed to know. He would have a good story to tell them, about his train ride.
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