“We have mortally wounded this sweet life-supporting planet — the only one in the whole Milky Way — with a century of transportation whoopee.” – Kurt Vonnegut, “A Man Without A Country,” 2005.
It is time for Americans to explore our country by train. What have we been doing all this time, rotting away inside our personalized tin cans? Joni Mitchell warned us after all that this would happen. We truly have paved paradise and put up about a million parking lots.
This is what ran through my mind as I took the Crescent Line from High Point to Washington DC earlier this March. I was headed to my Truman Finalist interview, and I was a ball of jitters pacing around the station with my crumpled-up policy proposal in hand, muttering to myself about the importance of community journalism. But as soon as I sat down on the train, a feeling of grand adventure overtook me.
It is true what Vonnegut once said in his book of essays, “A Man Without A Country.” Americans are addicted to a very powerful drug called petroleum. We are sick fiends for it! We pump our big, gaudy metal hogs with it, and we beg and beg for more. But you know what I am a sick fiend for? Public transportation.
Other countries around the world seem to have cracked the code on public transportation and have said, “Yes! We do want our citizens to have access to grocery stores, bookstores, art galleries, parks, and hospitals without having to invest thousands of dollars into a greedy, oil hungry leech that requires gallons upon gallons of poison just to run, and miles and miles of concrete to be plastered across native grasslands and prairies just so it can sit and wait to be used.” And here’s the concerning thing about cars: anyone can drive them. I know this is not a good thing because I once tried to drive one, and it didn’t go well.
How grateful the inhabitants of European countries must be.
I am grateful to be an American in so many ways, but my heart yearns for the luxury of trains. How could one not be seduced by the red seats of England’s LNER, the woman on the loudspeaker in the tube that always tells you to “mind the gap”, and the speed at which one is hurled into the English countryside on the East Midlands Railway? I can’t forget Hamburg’s underground subway either, which hums like a beetle underneath the teal tile floors of the city, or Leipzig’s innovative streetcar that swerves and beeps charmingly like a sparrow down the eclectic streets with strange looking apartments that used to be part of East Germany. I do not discriminate against certain types of trains, railcars, subways, or streetcars. I love them all.
And so, I was delighted when it dawned on me that for my weekend trip to Washington DC, I could take the Amtrak train straight to Union Station without having to subject myself to the torments of airport travel. I was told not to get my hopes up about Amtrak, that it wasn’t up to European standards. However, I was pleasantly surprised. The crew members were awfully kind and attentive and my seat by the window was very comfortable. The dining options were abundant and reasonably priced. The characters on board were wildly fascinating and I spent six straight hours staring out into space as I crossed rivers, passed through farming towns, curved up mountains, and slowed down in valleys of pines. All because of the Crescent Line, I got a small taste of what the world outside of Salem College looks like, and for this, I will be forever grateful.
