A FIVE TRAIN TREK, INBOUND

Whenever I contemplate public transportation in this country, I immediately recall the concluding comment in a Michael Flanders comic monologue: “If God had meant for us to fly, he would not have given us the railways.” Although Amtrak remains my favorite mode of travel in the continental United States and likely will until one or the other of us disappears, its routes are few, and many interesting cities are not easily accessible. Now it is certainly true that had there been no family reunion last June, I could have continued aboard the Zephyr to Chicago, visited there for a few days, and then taken the Empire Builder to the Twin Cities and its Thruway Motorcoach Connection to Duluth. But of course, had there been no reunion in Fort Scott, I would have been in Bellingham practicing some Homeland Security of my own when the Faber Brothers ripped off the door and broke into my bedroom. Oh, that would have been delightfully ugly, and I’m sorry to have missed the confrontation; it might even have reduced the three-plus months wasted before reconstruction started, with a different company, or even landed me in jail. The only feasible way to reach Duluth in one day from Fort Scott is by car to Kansas City, by major airline to the Twin Cities, and then on to Duluth by whatever connecting flight is available. The local rancher-businessman who drove me to the airport was quite pleasant, interesting, and informative, and he got me there in plenty of time. After an airport “breakfast,” I went through security, found my boarding gate, and soon enough discovered that stormy weather was forcing many incoming flights, including the one on which I would depart, to use circuitous routes and hence arrive late. Of course the weather to the north of us was quite fine, so flights departing the Twin Cities, including mine to Duluth, were likely to do so on time. As I examined my tickets more carefully, I realized that the interval between these two “recommended connection” flights, originally small and now continuously decreasing, wasn’t my only problem: I recognized my seat assignment from an earlier identical misfortune, 23-F on a DC-9, as putting me in the right rear corner of a fully booked aircraft, in a seat that doesn’t recline and has no window. In compensation its occupant is rewarded with a jet engine just beside an ear, in my case, fortunately, the right one, which is decidedly the lesser effective of mine. It worked out just as I feared, leaving me way more than enough time to explore the relatively new airport facility, using its outside tramway, all of its moving walkways, and eschewing only an electric cart ride in a desperate attempt to find an interesting place to eat. Finally I spied the Itasca Grille, down a short flight of stairs, where one could belly up to the bar, order a couple of very acceptable martinis, and even eat; against my better judgment, I ordered what one should try once on any visit to Minnesota: Walleye strips. Well, as my guide, a long-time resident of Duluth later told us all: “They had likely been in the freezer since they were caught last season somewhere in Canada.” The martinis were enough to prepare me for the next leg of my trip, however, a flight aboard an RJ-85, a designation totally unfamiliar to me, in seat 5-E, a number that had bulkhead seat written all over it. The plane had four engines and about fifteen rows of seats; the bulkhead was only a low curtain, and it was left open; and the pleasant young woman seated next to me, a student at UM-Duluth, described many of that city’s features for me. I waited quite some time for the motel shuttle she had summoned via cell phone and finally took a cab. At the check-in counter I asked for the message the guide promised to leave there for late arrivals. “Oh, there is none; it will be recorded on your room phone,” said one of three receptionists, all of them more interested in discussing their social lives than in helping me. “You have no new messages,” intoned the phone, the guide having done exactly what he promised. Ultimately I managed to wander out the door, hungry and still dressed in traveling clothes, and spotted the van just about to leave for the evening’s bird-watching trip, its prime objective being a Great Gray Owl. Did I want to join them, or have dinner? I made the only sensible choice; they found a most remarkable GGO, but next morning we went back and saw another, more conventional one. The rest of the trip went equally well, aided by the presence of two highly experienced sharp-eyed-and-eared participants, one of whom I had met previously in Texas, and the overwhelming, but friendly, expertise of our driver-guide, a resident of Duluth since 1977, “including winters.” The various forest habitats near that city offered views of many interesting birds, particularly warblers and vireos, but it was the grassland prairie west of Fargo that excited me most. For one thing, some of the birds there are big enough for old eyes to see; for another, there are no leaves to hide them. Before lunch on the trip’s antepenultimate day, I had seen, and really well, all eight of the new species I sought, four of them on this very Sunday morning. We passed by a church whose steeple reminded me of a Norwegian stave church, and the vastness of the sky emphasizing the flatness of the land was so reminiscent of those many carefree days on the Serengeti. We ate our lunch in the Pettibone city park, where someone in greater need even than I found that the adjacent volunteer fire station not only housed four engines but also his and her restrooms intended for public use as evidenced by the nearby donation box; seldom, if ever, was a dollar better spent. Three little boys, obviously starved for companionship in this town of ninety-three souls, soon joined us for lunch, of which we had plenty to share, and were clearly disappointed when they learned we were spending the rest of the day elsewhere. It was nearly midnight two days later when my sleeping car attendant roused me in the St. Paul waiting room, where I had spent more than a few hours, grabbed my luggage, and saw to it that I was soon back to sleep, this time in my scheduled quarters. I awakened at sunrise in Fargo, two hours late, the train, not me, and so enjoyed once again the grasslands, the Red River Valley–whose eponymous song had been my favorite lament when wrested from friends in a two-room grade school near Seattle to endure the fifth and sixth grades in Iowa–and the many birds temporarily domiciled in the prairie potholes. Montana’s Big Sky country reminded me of the Serengeti except that its herds of pronghorns were no match for the latter’s variety and numbers of animal life. The best part of this fourth train segment to me, however, occurred on that fateful final day, July 1, as the train descended early in the morning from the frighteningly long Cascade Tunnel along the very scenic and still excitingly wild Skykomish River, past Mt. Index, and on to its merger with the Snoqualmie River, after which, for reasons known best to the First Nation–a Canadian designation I much prefer to Native American–peoples who originally inhabited this area, is thereafter known as the Snohomish River. In the past decade of travel on Amtrak, this hour was matched only once, by the views of Mt. Shasta seen from a northbound Coast Starlight that was sufficiently late to pass by that area in morning daylight. As I learned in Tanzania, being on time is not always wise. On July 7, Kristen moved me home from the motel, and when she resumed her regular schedule the following week, the two of us put the front room–upstairs–and the bedroom–downstairs–into fully covered defensive postures. I had little else to do but look out over my desk at the Bay and await reconstruction, always promised soon but always at an unknown date. This sitting position placed my left–and better–ear about ten feet away from my neighbors’ unit, at this time separated merely by a sheet of plywood on their side and a light, colorful tapestry pinned over the studs on mine. Conversations in the neighbors’ unit were clearly audible to me, and vice versa; with their gracious consent I responded by turning up the volume of my music, particularly when grandkids were present. A much better solution was provided by Dow, who, in one hour flat–actual timing–and at the modest cost of a gourmet dinner out, installed insulation and covered it with a sheet of heavy black plastic. This not only allowed Kristen to retrieve her tapestry, but also gave me a second surface on which to attach printed materials; articles expressing strong disapproval of the present administration’s conduct of the nation’s business and its election campaign were pinned to the board downstairs, and those dealing with less polarizing matters, like baseball, were taped to the plastic upstairs. Now I must confess that since resigning as its president some years ago, I have studiously avoided all business meetings of the misnamed Boulevard Brownstones Condominium Owners’ Association and so don’t understand at all how the current officers produced the mess I first saw on July 1 nor why over three months passed before reconstruction began. I was at home on September 17, however, when an architect inspected the state of my unit and again the next week when he returned with a prospective builder in tow; shortly thereafter the two agreed to take on the job. A contract was signed on October 7, and the start of reconstruction, involving all sixteen units, was scheduled for October 11. Day One of Reconstruction Week One was quiet; I first observed a young man in a white hard-hat standing outside my bedroom window looking up and down at the spaces once occupied by decks with a facial expression that betrayed his indecision on what to do next. A little later he was joined by another hard-hat, whom I assumed to be the on-site foreman, and finally the architect, who was no more agile in being helped up the rock embankment from Boulevard than I was in years past when there was reason for me to visit the lawn. The focus of this trinity soon shifted to the hole under my lower deck, and when they came right up to the window, stared hard at the hole, and began a serious discussion, I decided it was time for lunch, downtown. On opening the bedroom blinds the next morning, I realized that Day Two marked the beginning of real work. It was just after dawn, and already a backhoe, aimed straight at my place, was crawling awkwardly up the embankment separating the sidewalk from our–then still green–lawn. After reaching the top, it rested briefly and then resumed its advance on my unit spitting out mawfuls of earth as it came. When the ditch reached the pool of water that had underlain my bedroom for a decade or so, the architect reappeared, this time agilely descending by ladder to the lawn from a parking area one story above. After his inspection and approval of the ditch, a stream of small rocks was sprayed into it through the tail of yet another modern mechanical monster parked one story above, some of them rattling off the remnants of the decks. After a flexible black plastic tube designed to drain that pool was laid atop those stones, I decided again to seek refuge downtown. The ditch had been refilled with soil by the time I returned, and the mechanical giraffe was at rest near its original entrance point, leaving only a muddy rectilinear stripe across the lawn as a grim reminder of its work; it withdrew completely early the next morning. That first week was filled with other activities as well, ranging from Monday’s placement of a septic-toilet unit near our dumpster on the upper level to the arrival of a storage-cum-office unit that occupies a corner of our lower level parking area. A carpenter or two appeared at midweek and began sawing on some of the material that had survived the deconstruction and a few months of neglect, but by Friday the main activity was to bring in new supplies. The architect and his advisees were often in evidence, standing in front of my lower window staring plaintively heavenward. In retrospect it was a very pleasant beginning compared to the next four or five weeks that featured the chaotic cacophony of a construction crew that, although very polite and friendly, made little attempt to reduce the din. I played opera tapes at full volume, really full volume, to drown out some of the noise. They seemed to have no effect on the crew but did assuage my discomfort, and I was pleased to see that they interested Kristen; she even borrowed one each weekend for a few weeks. The ultimate insult, however, was the encapsulation of the entire side of our units in an opaque blue plastic tent for a very long period, or so it seemed, thus shutting off any view of the Bay and most of what little daylight Bellingham receives in autumn. I don’t think even my internist would criticize the compensatory practice I adopted: close the shades and leave shortly before noon, indulge in good food and fine wine as long as possible, and above all don’t return until the workday is ended. The inside restoration I have longingly awaited, not always patiently, since July 1 finally began on December 3, but it has progressed with glacial slowness mainly because many workmen, including the co-owner in charge of our project, have taken vacations during the holidays, leaving the few available to cover the firm’s other projects as well. On December 28, I could finally pronounce the upstairs done except for a minor weather-stripping adjustment on the new door. In a jubilant mood, expecting the downstairs to be finished that afternoon, I rushed off to town for lunch. Wrong! The workman was called to another job and left without even locking my door. He returned the next morning with a new door that turned out to be the wrong size; he would have the correct one on Friday, New Year’s Eve and would install it then. He actually didn’t return until January 6, when he again made that same promise. Since snow was already falling, I discounted that possibility. Temperatures have remained below freezing, and there are several inches of snow on the ground with more predicted; extreme cold is expected to follow, and my best chance for completion is an early spring. It’s not unusual for me to spend at least part of the Holiday Season in novel surroundings, but these seem the most bizarre of all, sitting at my desk in the partially reconstructed wreckage of my own home, looking out over a debris-cluttered yard that looks more like a World War I battlefield than a lawn. Never has Tasmania seemed more appealing. W. Vance Johnson 10 Jan 05