That One Time, When I Took Amtrak

The longest trip I’ve ever taken by train was from Urbana, Illinois north to the campus of the University of Chicago. It was a return trip, at night, in the middle of January. The train’s inexorable forward motion offers a lot of time to think, to stew about your problems and consider the future.
     I’m on the mock trial team at school. We had to go down to Urbana for a tournament, and nobody was old enough to drive a rental car, so it was the CTA, Amtrak and some walking.
     The tournament was ok, our team didn’t do especially well, but it was our first time together, and I suppose I was a little more disappointed than most of the other people because I had turned in a remarkably poor performance.
     The train is a place for contemplation, even more so if you’re walking a mile and a half to get on it. When you’re getting off at the last stop, there’s plenty of time to sit back and stew on your failures. When it’s a night train, there’s none of the scenery you might get during the day to distract you. Just a blank, black window to cry onto, as long as there isn’t anybody sitting in the bright-turquoise-height-of-eighties-style-decor seat next to you to complain. There wasn’t anybody. I don’t remember crying, just going over my disappointing performance in my head a hundred times, wondering how I could have let my team down so much. I only remember hearing one statement on the entire ride. The conductor’s voice filtered through the crackly old speakers in the car (old enough to be creaky and dirty, but not old enough to be vintage, or even retro) and he said, almost sang in a bit of a southern lilt, “Kaaannkaaaakeeeee! This is Kankakee. We're waiting for the good old Canadian National Railroad Dispatching Department to get us a route. Sorry for the delay again, we're waiting for the Canadians. They're not very good at their jobs.”
     I don’t remember talking to any of my friends on the way back. I suppose the conductor’s announcement, which I wrote down so I could commit it to memory, was both salt and balm for my wounds.
     It was salt because I felt almost like it applied to me when he said the Canadians weren’t very good at their jobs. Sure, I’m not Canadian, but I had just done a pretty bad job, and it felt like this portly man with his jaunty cap was calling me out in front of the hundreds of people on the train.
     It was balm because it gave me a goal. Never once would anyone call me out behind my back about my work. This is a stupid goal, because my work (in anything) will never be quite good enough.
     Kankakee is two stops from Union Station, and the train kept chugging through the night toward Chicago, and I kept stewing. I think it was because I was in such a haze that when we steamed into the terminal I got my backpack, my suit bag and the big art portfolio with the blown-up pictures we used for evidence and just walked out of the station. I was angry, depressed, and tired, and as soon as I got out of the station, I was cold. I suppose I assumed that some of my friends would come and get on the CTA to come back home with me. I was wrong, but I wasn’t paying attention.
     I went upstairs, realized nobody else was there, and found a map. The feeling of being a tourist in a new city at night is powerfully uncomfortable. That same feeling when you’ve lived in the city for four months and still have no idea where the hell you need to go is like a punch in the gut followed by a slap in the face.
     I suppose I did look like a tourist, staring at a map Union Station’s surroundings, desperately trying to find the Red Line train to get me back home. A man came up to me and told me that he directed tourists places for money to buy food. I told him I wasn’t really a tourist, but if he wanted to direct me to the train, I’d give him the three dollars in my wallet. It worked out well. We had a wonderful conversation about being thankful for what you have, and I suppose that made me less annoyed at the whole situation. I was still pretty disappointed, though.
     In the depths of winter, I often forget or neglect the lessons I learned from my grandfather, Louis Newman, and from Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine.
     Anyway, the man and I arrived at a train station which had only the Green line, not the Red. The Green line is a little more adventurous than the Red line, but it would get me where I needed to go, which was home. After midnight. Riding the CTA is very interesting endeavor, and very different from riding the Amtrak. On Amtrak, for one, you can be fairly sure you won’t be mugged. But here I was, pissed and depressed, and carrying at least one and possibly two items which looked like they might be valuable. Certainly the Green line was a poor choice.
     As I stood on the platform, waiting for the train, I got a call from my team captain. She sounded worried. I sounded annoyed. I thought we were all getting on the train. We were all sharing cabs. I was already in the CTA station, and was not making the half-hour walk back to the Amtrak terminal, especially not now that all the disappointment I felt had been channeled into anger.
     The Green line train came. It was the kind that goes to 63rd and Cottage Grove, which doesn’t really matter, because I was getting off at Garfield, the last stop before the split. I got on and piled my things in an angry mess on the seat next to me. The art portfolio was in front of my feet.
     The contemplation on the CTA is much more wary than the contemplation on the Amtrak, but the train is a contemplative drug in all its forms. I suppose, looking back on it, that the reason I didn’t get mugged that night was that I just looked so incredibly angry.
     I’m not angry about it anymore. I suppose time heals wounds. But waiting for the 55 bus at the corner of Garfield and King Drive in the freezing cold with my Green Bay Packers winter hat on, I was worse off, probably, than I’ve ever been before or since.

Who is the Second Assistant?

He's the one standing on the sidelines, waving the flag for offsides, no matter what happens to the Referee. He's important enough to call the most difficult play on the field, but not important to call anything else. That would have to be the first assistant. The second assistant will hear nothing most days, and all of the blame some days, and once in a blue moon, he'll take a bit of credit.