Wednesday, January 4, 2012.
A Day On The Crescent. Hitching A Ride Home.
I didn't awaken until nearly seven. The attendant didn't have the coffee ready, so I just went straight into the diner for breakfast. An omelette of cheese, spinach, and onions was nicely made, and came with grits, a biscuit, a side of bacon, orange juice and coffee.
My dining companion was an administrator with the Jefferson parish school system. He'd also been a teacher at UNO for some time. I didn't have to introduce myself. We talked a long time about many matters of pith and moment. He and his wife said they'd never been on a train before, but were liking it.
The Crescent has a long history of good training. (Its predecessor trains take it back to 1891.) The Norfolk Southern Railway keeps its trackbed in much better shape than most. It's an incomparably smoother ride than the City Of New Orleans on the Illinois Central. If there were really bad patches on this route, I slept through them all.
I spent most of the day in the roomette, catching up with my regularly-scheduled writing, which went into abeyance during the vacation. Two other matters were on my mind. I seem to be catching a cold, with no vitamin C tablets with which to fight it. And I could not find anyone to give me a ride home from the Slidell train station. I was far down my list of friends before I found one who was not out of town. I had the number for Parish Cab, the taxi service in St. Tammany Parish. But I couldn't seem to get through to them, either. Would I be marooned at the station in Slidell?
I was able to reach the Marys. They spent last night in Colonial Williamsburg, where we visited fifteen years ago. Mary Ann said that the period-piece town didn't look as good as she remembered. But then, nothing does. The were on their way to Atlanta, where they will spend two nights with her niece Jennifer and her three kids. Mary Ann loves little kids. Fortunately, she's very much over having the kind you keep.
I was having lunch (a big salad) with yet another New Orleanian as the train slipped into Tuscaloosa. We were both taken aback by what we saw just outside the window. It looked as if a bad storm had been through recently--and then we knew we were looking at the aftermath of the tornado here last year. Lots of roofs with blue plastic, broken trees, empty lots where buildings had stood not so long ago. Sobering.
I spent the rest of the journey in my room, typing away. The only interruption was a call from Ceil Lanaux, who said she'd be happy to collect me in Slidell. Her good deed was punished. The train, having departed Birmingham on time, somehow lost forty-five minutes along the way. She said that as long as we were meeting up she wanted me to autograph a couple of books. She fought me on my offer to give her the books for free, but she'd already bought one from a bookstore so I could only give her one. I will have to give her some more Lost Restaurants. She seems very much to like the book.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
