Lamy, New Mexico train station – Wikipedia
Now that it’s possible to go anywhere—at least in theory, as the pandemic seems to be waning—I don’t want to go.
This is new, and like anything new, it’s interesting, if briefly.
The tour brochures are beginning to arrive again, with their lustrous photographs of unimagined and even unimaginable places far, far away. But I remember too well the canned smell of air in long-haul airplanes where even the unbelievable cost of business-class tickets can’t quell the atmosphere of death-by-air, or death without air, the misery of those sleepless nights that end with the glare of a dawn that comes at an impossible time—where are we, anyway?—and now of course the possible spectacle of passengers attacking each other for wearing or not wearing masks.
I just tried riding on a train to see if it was different: Amtrak still runs, as it always has, one long-haul east and one long-haul west Superchief across the country, from New York to Los Angeles, with many small feeder lines up and down the east and west coast. The interior of the country is mostly trainless.
The best part of the Lamy, New Mexico ride to Union Station, Los Angeles is the Lamy station. It sits on what passes for the main street in this tiny town, with a dirt parking lot, a stationhouse of orange brick, and a waiting room with expansive carved wooden benches that once held throngs of passengers, including Mabel Dodge Luhan and other refugees from the east coast cities.
Yesterday it held me and one other woman. She was waiting for the Eastern train, Lamy to Chicago to New York—two nights, two days—and I was waiting for the Western train, Lamy to Gallup to Los Angeles, overnight.
The train pulled in on time, a strange metal cylinder with an engine almost indistinguishable from the five coaches. Just one long metal line.
Four or five of us boarded. I was the only one going into the Sleeping Car where I’d reserved a tiny cubicle with two seats and a window. The two seats are made down in the evening into one bed that fills the space from end to end and side to side.
Covid has changed what was the charm of the ride: sitting at a table for four in the diner, with strangers. It always fascinates me to see how awkward we are at the beginning with people we don’t know and can’t “place”—is that woman in the long black dress and white cap a member of a religious order or a plain nut?—and how quickly we move into what almost seems like an intimate conversation, starting with the usual plain facts and moving on into dreamland.
Covid means I sit at a table alone. My dinner, chicken and spaghetti, comes red hot in a microwaved dish. It doesn’t taste much different from the chicken I eat in a restaurant, and it’s free.
An amiable young man has made up my berth while I was in the diner. There’s a shower down the hall, and several toilets. How simple it is just to go to bed on the train, all the home rituals eliminated.
Rattling on across the plains, I see that the parallel highway is mostly inhabited by monster trucks. They make wedges of light moving steadily along, one behind the other, all night.
The seven A.M. announcement that we are running 90 minutes late explains that the track doesn’t belong to Amtrak but to the Burlington-Northern-Santa Fe and its freights always take priority, which meant we were stopped on a siding at some silent point during the night.
Breakfast is fast, a paper cup of cereal and a paper cup of coffee.
All during the trip, the couple in the compartment across the aisle from mine sat in silence. When they closed their curtain, I could see the man’s feet, solidly planted. When they opened it, the woman was on her phone, her age-creased face intent, reminding me of a native tradition: the world will end when the trees die and people stare at square boxes.
The hustle in Union Station reminds me of the way we shuffle people around efficiently: mechanical carts carry us to the lobby, the driver honking loudly at pedestrians who get in his way. This conveyance seems akin to the vast industrial parks on the way into the city with their huge piles of metal pipes, bursting tons of wrapped paper, fleets of earth-moving equipment. We know how to get things done as long as we don’t have to worry about the costs. I don’t like leaving the big station; it seems more homelike than home.
I still don’t want to go anywhere but if I go I want it to be on a train.
Union Station, LA interior. Photo: unionstationla.com
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