The Coast Starlight: A Review

Servicing stops from Los Angeles to Seattle, AMTRAK calls the Coast Starlight the “most scenic of all train routes.” I took the touted eleven-hour ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I had the book Lucky Jim with me and was looking forward to a peaceful day of reading and scenery. I hoped the eighty-five dollar one-way ticket (almost twice as expensive as it is to fly) would be enough to herd the noisemakers, lunatics, cell phone enthusiasts, morons, and general riffraff in the direction of Frontier Airlines where they belong. This is what I had hoped.

*

The dumbest man on the train was named Wayland. He was sitting across the aisle and one row in front of me. When I found my seat he was talking and for the duration of the trip, he never once considered stopping. Somewhere along the way in his life Wayland got the idea that the game everyone was secretly playing was to try and turn basic friendly small talk into rambling, divisive, political speech making, as quickly as possible. The person with the fewest number of words in between saying “It’s nice to meet you” and saying “Mexicans are ruining the country,” wins the game.
His relentless, unhurried, bellow, of a voice stood out as potential trouble the moment I stepped on the train. The first thing I heard him say as I stuffed my bag into the overhead compartment was, “In the old Gas Lamp District in 1977, I smoked a joint right in front of a cop. People didn't care back then. But this country isn’t what it used to be…” A second voice responded to this with a surprising degree of impatience considering we were just boarding and both speakers couldn’t have been subjected to one another for more than three minutes. “Oh, for god’s sake, don’t start with that shit already!” The voice said. This voice belonged to Tim, who, 180 seconds into their relationship, had already had enough of Wayland.
Tim was the second dumbest man on the train and sitting directly in front of me. He was in his mid-fifties and wore a messy kind of handle bar moustache. His right arm was in a sling thanks to a broken color bone. You didn’t have to listen to Tim talk for long to know that this collar bone injury wasn’t the result of some hard luck, million to one shot, fluky accident that could have happened to anybody. No, Tim was the sort of dimwit who the local emergency room workers know by name. Close your eyes and you can picture Tim climbing up onto some unstable looking thing to try to fix something he has no clue how to fix before belting out a few bars of the “whoa… whoa… whoa” song that idiots so often find themselves singing. The next day he’s giggling with his buddies over how many Percocets his doctor gave him.
“No religion or politics on the train!” Tim invoked the old barroom rule. “Everyone just wants to have a nice, relaxing trip!” Wayland talked about nothing but religion or politics for the next 300 miles.

*

I knew Scott in the café car and I were going to have problems after his very first announcement. He came over the loudspeaker and told us he “wasn’t open yet.” In a tone superior and hostile, and a voice weasely and small, Scott lectured us, “I REPEAT THE CAFÉ CAR IS NOT OPEN YET. I WILL MAKE AN ANNOUNCEMENT WHEN I’M READY. PLEASE DO NOT COME TO THE CAFÉ CAR UNTIL I MAKE MY ANNOUNCEMENT.” This beleaguered plea went on and on like this while the train was still just rolling out of Union Station. No one had even seen this guy yet and he was coming on as though we’d been chasing him down for pretzels since the day he was born. To be sure, he thought of his no nonsense manner as a kind of anticipatory self-defense. We may not have bothered him yet, but he knows what life down in the café car is like. If he wasn’t firm with us at the start, we’d be down there non-stop, asking if he’s open when he’s closed. “I’m not open.” He’d have to keep saying. Scott in the café car wasn’t about to watch this happen. He ended the announcement with a series of threats about inebriation and irresponsible drinking. Drunk passengers would be thrown off the train, he warned. He closed with a flight attendant caliber joke: “Just remember that Bud, does not make you wiser.” Yes, it would be fair to say that I had plans for Scott in the café car.

*

Wayland the talker was a peculiar sort of imbecile. At a glance he seemed your typical west coast, burn out, hippie used-to-be. His politics, though, were a blend of right-wing quasi-self-determinism and conspiracy theory hokum. At the Oxnard station, a few stops before Santa Barbra, an excited young couple boarded on their way to wine country. They sat next to Wayland. “How are you folks doing today?” Wayland asked.
“Great!” The woman smiled. “We’re heading up to the vineyards for the first time!” Wayland wasted no time.
“Wine is a terrible thing to put into your body.” He said. “I only shop at Whole Foods. The thing the wine producers don’t want you to know is that grapes are basically a worthless crop. They invented wine so that they could make a profit out of what is essentially a weed. There are some things I’ll buy at Trader Joe’s, but not very many. This country isn’t what it used to be.” Wayland worked tirelessly to ruin these people’s afternoon for the next hour. His lecture was disrupted every three minutes or so by Tim shouting, “Wayland shut the fuck up! No one wants to hear this shit! We all just want to relax!” The young couple couldn’t believe what was happening to their nice afternoon. Somehow Wayland managed to turn his wine conspiracy talk into a Jimmy Carter’s failure to stand up to the Shah of Iran in the 70’s plays a major role in why this country isn’t what it used to be talk. Scott in the café car came over the intercom to tell us that the dinning car would be opening shortly. While the dinning car was open, the café car would be closed. If anyone so much as thought about going into the café car while the dinning car was open Scott would personally throw them off the train at the next stop. Wayland shouted his simpleton politics over Scott’s announcement. With the fist attached to his unbroken collarbone, Tim started pounding his own leg screaming “SHUT UP WAYLAND! SHUT UP WAYLAND! SHUT UP WAYLAND!” The couple grabbed their bags and rushed over to a conductor to have their seats moved. I hadn’t read a single word of Lucky Jim.


*

The dining car was an easy to predict nightmare. It was “communal dining” which left me part of an ugly foursome. Two of the three were no immediate threat. The decrepit looking old Asian woman across from me only had a soon to be dead tonal language and some grunting and pointing in her communication arsenal. The Hispanic man to my right seemed to have a bit of “kitchen English” in his quiver, but mostly just shot confused glances. These two weren’t going to be the problem. If anyone was going to try to talk to me it was Omar; the fourth dumbest man on the train. This swarthy thirty-something I definitely needed to keep my eye off. One false glance and I would extend the internationally and cross-culturally accepted invitation for harassment we call eye contact. I kept my gaze fixed on my plate, reciting my old mantra “He’ll want to talk… He’ll want to talk” to myself. My burger was eaten into its crescent phase. A few more bites and I could get out of there and back to Wayland and Tim, the poison I knew. But Omar sensed I was plotting an escape. He saw it was time to bring out his queen. “It’s a lot bumpier in this car than where my seat is.” He said. I kept staring down at my waning burger, my heart pounding. Omar waited, and then pressed on. He wanted to get to the bottom of this bumpiness business. “Did you guys think it was is as bumpy in the passenger cars as it is in this car?”
“It’s equally bump in all the cars.” I educated. “It’s just that you’re trying to eat and there are glasses of water in front of you, so you’re noticing it more.” Omar thought about this before nodding slowly and looking back down at his plate like the sad, beaten, imbecile that he was.

*

The observation car is where the Coast Starlight makes its money. I was sitting with Lucky Jim closed on my lap looking out the floor to ceiling windows. I watched the scenery change from the picturesque pacific coastline to dusty John Steinbeck country. Every passing shed or broken down barn looked more like what the Palace Flophouse probably looked like. A little old lady carefully made here way into the observation car. Her little old husband was right behind her. He probably had been since a time when Cannery Row was just a row of canneries. They were struggling to walk down the aisle due to the bumpiness Omar somehow believed might be limited to the dining car. When the old lady realized the café car was still a car away, and down a flight of stairs, she looked at her husband in disappointment. “Oh no.” She said, loud enough to be heard by everyone. “I can’t make it that far. Lets go back dear, I don’t need a Coke that badly.” I handled this situation in my usual way. I waited for as long as possible to see if someone else would volunteer to do the nice thing first. No one did.
“Ms. I can go down there get you a Coke, if you want.” I said, hitting the “if you want” perfectly to imply that it would be an enormous undertaking, inconvenience, and a bit rude on her part to even consider allowing me to go all the way down there to get her a Coke. Unfortunately her face lit up at my offer. She said that would be wonderful and that I was a very sweet young man. I said, “fuck me” out loud as I got up and went to get her a Coke.

*

Scott in the café car was exactly how you imagined him. A short, balding, no-good rodent. When I got down the stairs he had a conductor cornered and was bragging about having “cut off” an old man because he had drunk two double scotches in an hour. That made four drinks in an hour. Passengers were only aloud TWO DRINKS per hour, Scott reminded the conductor. A DOUBLE scotch is TWO DRINKS, not ONE DRINK! Scott looked like he wanted to high five the conductor over this near non-occurrence. The conductor seemed as uninterested in this story as any one familiar with the potential of stories would be. I stepped up to the counter and ordered a Coke and a bottle of Bud. Scott asked for my ID. He looked at it and shouted “New Jersey!” but he pronounced it New Joy-zee!

(A digression: I grew up in New Jersey. I spend a fair amount of energy in my life trying to stay away from the place. I find it a preposterous state, full of mostly preposterous people. That said, I will defend it to the death on one important front; I have never, and, thanks to an informal experiment I have been conducting for almost twenty years, I can say safely say that NO ONE has ever, heard a person pronounce the name New Jersey – New Joy-zee. No one. Anywhere. Ever. I have challenged countless people who have made this so-called joke to present me with a person from New Jersey who calls it New Joy-zee. No one has been able to produce such a person. People from New Jersey do call their numerous malls, mawls. Baseball? Basebawl. They drink Caufee. If your name is Paul, goodluck not being called Pawl. When I lived in Boston they would visit me in a placed called Bauston. You see the trends. Linguistically “New Joy-zee” isn’t even consistent with the actual regional accent there. It’s a false memory infecting the collective unconscious. You, dear reader, probably believe you have heard someone say New Joy-zee. You haven’t.)

“Where’s the birthday on here?” Scott squinted at my license trying to find the date. I didn’t answer him. It took him thirty seconds longer to track it down than I would have imagined possible. Scott was the third dumbest man on the train.
“Ah, there it is!” he said. “1975. That’s the year I was supposed to graduate high school!” He laughed out loud at this bit of nothingness. I glared through him. He stopped laughing and stared back nervously. “$11.50.” he said. I handed him a ten and a five. I stared him down like I was about to dive over the counter and snap his neck as he put my change in front of me. I didn’t touch it. I slowly turned away in lopsided victory. I heard Scott exhale as I walked toward the stairs to bring the old lady her coke.

*

Back at my seat, Wayland had begun a campaign of farting. Tim was losing his mind. “Wayland you stupid asshole! Quit fucking farting! I’m trying to relax!”
“It’s not me.” Wayland lied.
Then this exchange (I swear on my life) took place.

Tim: If you have to shit, just go shit!
Wayland: I don’t have to shit! I’m not farting!
Tim: You’re lying! Just shit if you have to shit!
Wayland: (A long pause) Fine! I’ll go shit. But I’m not farting!”

There was simply no way I was going to make any progress with Lucky Jim sitting in this asylum. I got my bag and moved permanently into the observation car.

*

A silver haired man named William sat next to me and made a conspicuous show of looking at what I was reading. He waited a few minutes before saying, “I met him, you know?”
“You met who?” I sighed
“Kingsley Amis.” He said.
I shook my head. Another fucking mental case.
“You should read Everyday Drinking.” He said with a slight but noticeable drunken slur.
“I have read it.” I shot back firmly, letting him know I wouldn’t be pushed around. William told me he studied at Oxford in the 1950’s and had met Kingly Amis multiple times. For some reason I believed him. We talked for half an hour about books. He turned out to be a retired English professor from UCLA. Quickly it became clear; William was the second smartest man on the train.
But, just when I was starting to enjoy his conversation and even company, William laid down the rub.
“Would you mind going down to the café car to get me a drink, much? I’ve been having problems with my knees and struggle down those stairs.” He said. I was about treat him to a vicious stare-down when he told me his drink. When he told me his drink, I smiled.

*
“Two double scotches.” I said devilishly.
Scott in the café car thought carefully about the order.
“You know you can only drink two drinks per hour?” he said.
“One is for a friend of mine.” I said sharply.
Scott paused. He suspected something was up. He wanted to say something. I tightened my eyes. The pasting I had subjected him to earlier was still fresh in his mind. He hurried about pouring the two drinks after calling me “sir.”
“My friend and I really appreciate it.” I taunted him.
He knew what was happening.
“You’re welcome.” Was all he could muster.
I laughed in his face and left with drinks.

*
I tapped my plastic cup full of whiskey against William’s. We toasted California, books, Kingsley Amis, and the piece of shit Scott down below. I watched California roll by and thanks to Steinbeck, whiskey, and Wayland, I couldn’t help but think about what America used to be.