“My name’s Russ,” he began. “This is my bus, and that’s no fuss.”
Great, I thought.
A friggin’ comedian.
“But if you cuss, you gotta get off my bus.”
By that standard, I assumed I’d be getting off soon.
“But seriously, folks, I’m your driver. I should have you to Union Station in about an hour and a half.”
Russ was trying. I’d give him that.
And he had full, glorious head of vintage, circa 1983, Kenny Rogers hair.
It was fantastic.
But I had no desire to be on his bus.
It was half past midnight. Day after Christmas.
Well, it had been the day after Christmas.
That was when the ordeal had started.
We were in the parking lot of the Amtrak station in Sedalia, Missouri.
I had started out from Alton, Illinois, some ten hours before on Amtrak’s Missouri River Runner, destined for Kansas City’s Union Station.
It had become an annual trek, taking the train between my in-laws’ in Illinois and my home in Kansas City the day after Christmas.
The week between the holidays is a particularly productive one for me.
I like to tie off loose ends from the closing year and get things organized for the coming one.
I get my finances in order for tax season, make the outlines of a budget, and get my calendar arranged.
Then, after a productive week, I make the return trip to Illinois to celebrate New Year’s with the family.
I look forward to that time, particularly the portion spent on the train.
It’s my Xanadu.
To me, it’s the perfect mode of travel.
Cars just make my ass hurt after a while.
Buses are often crowded, uncomfortable, and filled with weirdos.
Planes and airports can offer an enjoyable experience.
But they can also be complete disasters during the holidays, with impatient people and unpredictable weather threatening to turn your plans sideways at any given moment.
And then, after cars, and somewhere between buses and planes, is the train.
It moves gracefully through small towns and the countryside at a steady, leisurely pace.
Staring out the window, sipping coffee from the dining car, you get a throw-back experience. You travel in much the same manner as members of your grandparents’ generation did.
It reminds you of simpler times.
Or, more accurately, it makes you idealize what you assume to have been simpler times.
Because no time is really that simple.
Anyway.
I like to daydream on the train.
My mind wanders where it pleases, and I’m happy to let it do so.
I don’t try to force it into productive use, although it often finds its way there on its own.
I do some really great thinking.
I figure stuff out.
And then I take a nap.
Such is the train.
For all these reasons, I did not want a story to emerge from my train experience.
I wanted it to proceed exactly as planned, without any strange or noteworthy events or people emerging from it.
Which is something of a departure.
Since committing myself to writing weekly essays on life as I observe it, I’ve actively looked for stories in the petty, mundane, and otherwise unremarkable.
Mostly, I’ve taught myself to become highly attuned to those things that annoy the shit out of me.
Aha! I tell myself as some random person does something stupid to piss me off.
There is a story.
And then I totally reframe the experience in a way that’s far more interesting.
I’m certainly not the first to do this.
I’ve read authors’ accounts in which they describe how they become keen observers of their of own lives the moment they decide to write about them.
It keeps things far more lively when you can detach yourself from certain circumstances and take a third-person view of your own experience.
Which is precisely what I did not want to do when the Missouri River Runner rolled into the station in Sedalia, Missouri.
After we’d sat there ten minutes longer than scheduled, I began to wonder if something was up.
Twenty minutes later, a conductor came by and said a freight train had broken down on the tracks ahead of us.
We’d have to sit there until the track could be cleared.
And no one knew how long that would take.
Twenty minutes became an hour.
Then two.
Then four.
I tried to make the most of the time and check in with a few friends.
Upon describing the delay to one friend, she replied, “Oh, good! Now you’ll have something to write about next week.”
Yeah, I know, but . . .
A handful of people had already arranged rides and gotten off the train.
Most of us just sat there, leaving our fates in the hands of the Amtrak gods.
And when the gods finally spoke, their answer was: buses.
Two were apparently on their way to Sedalia from Kansas City.
At that point, I decided to take my friend’s point of view and started looking around for a story.
I expected some number of those passengers still on the train with me to become irate at the thought of riding bus and to start doing stupid things.
Given the opportunity to be stupid, many people will.
I’ve learned that.
They’ll start harassing the conductor at least, I assumed.
They’ll make the delay out to be his fault and demand he do something.
“I’m not getting on some damn bus at midnight!” I thought I’d hear from someone.
But I didn’t.
People were strangely calm about the whole thing.
Most just went to sleep in their seats or scrolled around on their phones.
By the time Russ showed up with the first bus, a wet snow had begun to fall.
A small crowd of us stood waiting to board the bus getting cold and wet.
Now begins the bitching, I assumed.
I was among the last to board the first bus, and every seat was taken.
We were packed in, with many people holding their bags on their laps.
I took one of the last open seats near the middle of the bus next to a tall dude wearing headphones.
After I’d sat down, he politely informed me, “Excuse me, you’re sitting on my coat.”
Sorry, I said.
And I assumed it would be awkward after that.
“No problem,” he said, casually.
And not a bit or awkwardness ensued.
Nor did a single person on the bus start bitching.
Things were quiet for the entire trip to Union Station in downtown Kansas City, where we arrived around two-thirty in the morning.
Fifteen minutes later, I was in an Uber headed for my house.
The entire train-delay experience had failed to yield a single story.
Remarkable.
I was disappointed. And thankful.
When I got in the Uber, the first thing I noticed was the music.
It was a recording of a person chanting in Arabic and reminded me of the Muslim call to prayer I’d heard blaring from speakers on top of mosques in various places in the Middle East.
Sitting somewhere in the desert, I’d always found such music to be equal parts enchanting and spooky.
Where are you from? I asked the driver.
Somalia, he said.
Have you ever been? he asked me.
No, I said. But I’ve spent time in the Navy and know the U.S. military has a presence in Djibouti.
You know. Just trying to make conversation.
Big mistake.
The driver became irritated.
“Why!? Why!?” he asked me, “Why does the U.S. not fight in Somalia? Why!?”
Uh . . .
He then told me about members of his extended family still in Somalia being extorted by Al-Shabaab militants.
Why wasn’t the U.S. doing something to stop them?
I’m sorry to hear that, I told him.
But, as memory serves, the U.S. had a pretty bad experience in Somalia back in the Nineties, I explained.
Remember? That whole Blackhawk Down thing?
He wasn’t satisfied, so I quickly changed the subject.
And then we sat in awkward silence for the remainder of the drive to my house.
I’d made it all the way from Sedalia, Missouri, without any notable incident.
And I sure as shit didn’t intend to have one with this Somali Uber driver at three o’clock in the morning.
No, thanks.
I was quite happy to have the story end
Without there having been
Any story to tell
In the first place.