Tuesday, September 28. The Old Way To Travel. At quarter after one in the afternoon, twenty-seven Eat Clubbers waited for me at Union Passenger Terminal. I was the last to arrive, even with Mary Ann driving at her usual breakneck speed to deliver me. What a frantic morning! Too much to do, too many details to keep straight. Mary Ann handles that stress better than I do. I was losing my cool, literally and figuratively. It was enough to make me swear I'd never lead any kind of group trip again, although even as those words issued from my mouth I knew I will turn against them soon enough.
One thing I didn't have to worry about was the tray of appetizers for my fellow travelers. Mary Ann likes building such things, and assembled a much better and more attractive presentation that I would. She arranged prosciutto, capicola, sopressata, and several cheeses around grilled ciabatta bread brushed with olive oil. Then she scattered olives and almonds all over everything. It looked like too much food to me, but it proved to be just enough.
I spent most of the morning fretting over the cooking demo I will do for WLS-TV Thursday morning. Four dishes! Printed recipes! A picture of the book! Where do I need to go? When? Do I have all the ingredients I need? How will fresh shrimp and crabmeat travel overnight? Flash! The insulated bags they put your meats in at Rare Cuts, filled with as many frozen gel-packs as we can find, should do the job. I hope.
I'm glad I took a beta blocker.
At the station, the conductor surprised me by making the check-in for the group very easy. We walked right onto the train, ahead of all the other passengers. The hand-written group ticket--which looked to me to be too makeshift to be official--was accepted without question.
At the sleeping car--which our group will occupy almost in its entirety--the attendant had no list of our passengers, even though I'd sent them several times to the group department. But this worked out well, too. He said we should go ahead and take any sleeping compartment we wanted. Now that is a first. Room assignments on trains have always been set in stone. I took a space on the lower level, the better to serve the food and wine.
The attendant's name was Terry. He said he was a long-time listener to the radio show. He offered to help us move our rolling party up to the glass-top lounge-observation car. Perfect! We took over half the car with our case of wine and Mary Ann's platter, and celebrated for the next two hours. By the time we entered McComb, the entire case of wine was gone, and most of the food. That's what happened last time, too. We're off to a great start.
I took a nap in the upper bunk in my compartment, and woke up forty-five minutes later much more composed. And with a joke I literally dreamed up. Did you know that in the sleeping car on a train you can get away with asking a couple, "Well, who's going to be on top in the bedroom tonight?"
Terry continued to contribute to our good times by reserving the entire dining car for our use at 7:45 p.m. We responded with the liveliest gathering I've ever seen at dinner on a train. Laughter, bottles of wine appearing from bags brought on by our fellow travelers, and excited commentary about the terrible shape of the railbed north of Jackson.
The food was better than anything I've had on Amtrak since the 1970s. (Back then, Pullman-style dining cars, cooks, and service were still more or less the norm, but it eroded over the years since.) Those who ordered the sirloin strip steak with garlic butter reported that they were delicious--and they looked good, at that.
Having consumed more than my share of the salumi and cheese tray, I started with a spinach salad (no free dinner salad in the diner anymore) and cannelloni stuffed with ricotta and pulverized portobello mushrooms. This was the vegetarian special. In three decades I've ridden trains, the only consistent truth in the dining car has been that the vegetarian special is always good. The record held this time, too.
We retired to our compartments as we approached Memphis. The crowd that usually gets on there didn't. Instead, a dozen policemen were on the platform, with more arriving by the minute. Each of them held a packet of papers, the top one of which had a photograph of a rough-looking, bearded man.
Suddenly, there was action just outside my window. A young man who seemed to be disoriented was being held by three of the cops. Another of them unsnapped his holster and had his hand on the gun within. The young man was handcuffed and put into a cruiser.
I heard a knock on the door. It was a policeman. He wanted to know if anyone else were in my compartment. I don't know where he would have been hiding, but I just said no. Had I seen anyone who looked like he didn't belong? Yeah--you, I thought, but again kept my wise remarks to myself. I told him I knew everybody on this car.
I heard later that the other man of the two they were seeking had been apprehended, and that they were fugitives who thought they could jump on the train and getaway from whatever they were running from. When I reported this in my final call of the day to Mary Ann, her reaction didn't disappoint me. "Well, isn't that strange. Weird, sleazy people on a train? I can't believe it!" Mary Ann doesn't like trains.
I turned off the lights shortly after we departed Memphis, about eleven. I had the very nice sleep I always do on trains, even though the sleeping car was right behind the locomotive and the engineer was blowing his horn, on average, about once every five seconds. It just added texture to my dreams.
The Northbound City Of New Orleans. Amtrak Train #58. Daily service from New Orleans at 1:45 p.m. to Chicago at 9 a.m. the next morning.
