A Train Story

I arrived at the train station at 10:40 at night as that was the expected arrival time for a train, an Amtrak, that was very late. It had been a very long day. The station was locked and deserted. There wasn't a soul in sight though there were cars in the parking lot. I walked around to the front of the building: still no one. Emptiness. Silence.

I figured, the train is probabiy just a little more late, and I settled into my car to read for a few minutes. I was there to pick up an 18-year-old who has an incredible story. Basically someone put the wrong date on his birth certificate, December 8, when his birthday was yesterday, December 9. So he was going to Chicago to have it fixed and get a new birth certificate. And he needed this because of the whole car/license rite of passage that all 16-20-year-olds go through. He's >dying to get a car. So at 7 this morning I had brought him to the train and now, at 10:40 supposedly, he was. coming back.

At about eleven the station showed signs of life. It's as if some guy was taking a nap deep within it and just came out, turned lights on, and unlocked doors. Similarly some people showed up in the parking lot around me. It's as if they came out of nowhere. These people had a more updated Time of Arrival than 10:40; they knew something I didn't. Because they were all there at once.

I walked with the station manager out to the tracks. It was cold and windy, a very bleak winter night; what a time to have a birthday. I asked the guy if hard ice could derail a train. I know that they can plow their own snow, drifts of six feet or more, but the question is whether hard ice itself could run them off the track. He didn't know. We saw the light in the distance - train coming. It was coming through Galesburg, and toward us, and its light was steadily getting bigger.

Out there on the tracks there was an interesting view back at the station, and of the train museum, and of the town itself. There was some construction out there, and there was some decoration, altogether a bizarre combination of lights, with of course the one train light being the most important.

The train, it turns out, had hit a car in the suburbs of Chicago somewhere, and scraped it along the tracks; an ambulance had taken its passenger off, and the whole thing had caused the huge delay. Some car, he said, had tried to beat the crossing guards. Later I looked it up and it seemed as if it wasn't even news. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place.

When the train finally arrived it had dozens of people. I was surprised. That's why there were cars in the lot, I guess. Everyone was grateful to finally be back in Galesburg again. The kid had had quite a birthday, but had the birth certificate in his pack. He had succeeded....and had had a memorable birthday.