76. Phresh Cuts,  the Bronze Fonz and the "Cardinal" to the Gay Dolphin

(Across America by Amtrak - 3. Chicago, Milwaukee, and “The Cardinal” to Baltimore:

17 to 22 October, 2024)

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It struck me on arriving into Chicago on the California Zephyr from California that, apart from a bit of rainy squall in on a jet lagged first day San Francisco, every day since had been a pristine sunny Autumn (Fall) day.

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Chicago: Friday - another perfect Autumn Day:

The massive Union Station hall is open, with its gorgeous pastel colours and its less gorgeous lack of departing train information. One old bloke in a black railroad cap, lurking at a standing desk, calls the Amtrak departures without any amplified assistance, if he gets around to announcing at all.

I’m surrounded by quite well-dressed potential passengers on the traditional giant wooden US railroad station benches. By squinting through a large plate-glass window at the Amtrak first class passengers enjoying their free snacks in the Metropolitan Lounge, I can see a small screen showing train and Greyhound departure times but not yet departure track numbers… That information is broadcast at the very last minute in the US, creating a ‘charge of the pent-up passengers’ as they shove into the lower depths of the station to clamber up into their train of unallocated seats: American competitiveness at its finest!

Suddenly, in the hall, there’s a loud call: “Background Pax Required!”

About a third of the waiting passengers (the well-dressed ones with matching bags) stand and crowd around a film producer awaiting instructions for the “Extras” being filmed in the waiting area.

Later as I was hurrying towards the basement tracks for the “Hiawatha” train to Milwaukee, I was pursued by a small, grumbling black tractor with two tiny but intense floodlighting ‘eyes’ and a very discrete white sign: “You are being filmed”.  I was stalked towards a lounge of empty seats and full queue (really a holding pen), which was then let loose to climb into only two open doors of a 5 car train to grab their seats for the 90 minute journey.

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The greeting at Milwaukee Intermodal station was a Police Department notice not to leave guns in parked cars, and raw capitalism at work in the sleazy men’s rest room.

Despite the smear of some mystery mustardy liquid oozing from under one cubicle into the middle of the washroom floor, a large and enthusiastic hairdresser was at work (bringing with him a foldable canvas chair, battery clippers and a “Phresh Cuts” T shirt on his back, and an exemplary series of parallel patterns sculpted into his own tight black curls). One guy was being buzzed in the chair as two others were waiting, sitting on washroom basins. Like everyone else, one did one’s business and left them to it.

Hours later’ the Phresh Cuts business was booming, but had been evicted into a gravelly, vacant car park beneath the Interstate freeway across the street from the Milwaukee Intermodal station.

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Milwaukee is a city reinventing itself from an industrial/food processing/brewing past. The majority of downtown business architecture from 1890 to 1930 survives, creating a unique and human-scaled inner-city environment along the Milwaukee River. Much of it is being repurposed within the original facades, converting lines of former warehouses and factories into picturesque loft apartments with tiny balconies facing cleaned-up waterways.   City government is supporting the resurgence of the main city blocks with a new light rail line (free travel sponsored by the local casino) from the seedy end of town (Amtrak and Greyhound Intermodal, of course…) climbing steadily through the quiet downtown  including what seems to be a whole block zone of hairdressers, towards leafy-green Burns Commons with its mid 20th century stone houses in lush gardens decorated with “Republicans for Harris” signs.

The city’s River Walk in steady sunshine celebrates French explorers led by Pere Marquette, German dairying heritage and a German sausage factory…. AND the “Bronze Fonz”: HEYYYYY… a shiny and well-selfied Henry Winkler is perched on the boardwalk. There’s no sign of a “Laverne and Shirley”: sad.

A two-hour-delayed “Hiawatha” back to Chicago was testing the hyper-smiling station attendant, let alone the unsurprised and quietly grumpy Friday afternoon crowd. An enjoyable conversation with an old couple from Minneapolis waiting for the westbound “Empire Builder” home passed the time: “You don’t take Amtrak if you’re in a hurry, but it’s so relaxing when you do…”

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It really is possible for a post 70 year old traveller to (approximation of) run from Chicago Union Station for the cross-town bus to the Travelodge on the far side of The Loop – to charge into a closing door elevator - shower, change, demolish a sandwich from Wallgreens (delayed 10 minutes by an old lady patiently confronting the exhausted young cashier-with-eyelashes-out-to-THERE about whether her bottled Cokes were “still a twofer this week”: rescued by a weary manager), then to stagger the two blocks to arrive at Chicago Symphony Centre and - all in 45 minutes – to take your seat for an impressive evening of Handel (Water Music Suite and excerpts from oratorios), Beethoven Requiem and Mozart Coronation with the brilliant CSO Chorus. (“You don’t take Amtrak if you’re in a hurry, but it’s so relaxing when you do…”).

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Saturday:

 “Another brilliant Fall Day in Chicago! …. And if you are a visitor, you need to know it’s ALWAYS like this!!!” Illinois locals on the “Architecture Appreciation Cruise” laughed uproariously at the guide, looking over at the dry shoreline fountains, officially turned off from the start of October each year to avoid ice damage during a Winter which is yet to make its presence felt. What followed was a masterclass of 20th Century architecture in a restored wooden launch along the much-redirected Chicago River, and the dry humour of repeated stories of demands from every Chicago apartment dweller for a balcony, which they would never use.

The hotel diner breakfast had been the first place I’d seen in the US with an annoying demand of 3% on the credit card bill for bank fees  (plus tip, of course…). Lunch around the corner at a self-consciously twee cafe included a menu note “requesting” an additional 3% to cover “increases in the cost to the profession.” The “profession” in this cafe was so sad and dislocated and disinterested in its service that the “cost” seemed even greater. Plus tips. Or not.

Finding a rare “walk-in” hairdresser next to the hotel for some mowing and edging included a lecture from “your operator” about the deadly wildlife which marauds across Australia…

…followed by more queueing and train-rushing (well after published departure time) onto a meandering 26 hour journey to the east coast on the “Cardinal”.

Sunday: Dawn of another perfect day (of gorgeously lush Autumnal forested river valley landscape photos from a train). I have no photos of the large cities of Indianapolis and Cincinnati because I slept verrrry well through the wee small hours.

This is Train 50: the “Cardinal” which is not one of the “great” express trains of America, running only three days a week from Chicago, wandering down through Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia before heading northeast to New York City.

It’s also not quite the full Amtrak long-distance experience, as it is single-deck, short (one sleeper, two coach cars, cafe and service car), and has maintained the Covid-driven “flexible dining” “experience” of pre-frozen radar food with basic salad and roll and gluggy cake at dinner… and “disposable everything’, forming a mountain of trash on the table as you work through the meal courses on your disposable table mat with faux-metal plastic cutlery.

This makes for an budget-conscious “first class” for Amtrak. Ainsley, our hyperactive car attendant (so everything is energetically super-organised and any thanks is accepted with a “yup, yup, yup,” as he flurries to the next task…) zaps and serves dinners to one half of the cafe car which is also the lounge for sleeping car passengers. The take-away counter in the middle of the carriage “appeared” from a side wall after last night’s dinner service so that “Coach” could be kept at bay as they staggered in for their pot noodle-at-a-price meals, well separated from the likes of us! It’s slightly reminiscent of divided southern dining car train accommodations during the Jim Crowe years.

Ainsley’s off-sider serves “Coach” its take-outs while Ainsley is setting up/remaking sleeping berths, wakes overnight for stations where passengers join and leave in the unspeakably early hours, and keeps the restrooms and sleeping compartments spotless. Unfortunately when I went for a morning shower I discovered where the used linen was stored(!). With a bit of strategic rearrangement of the tiny compartment on some very bouncy tracks, and a squeeze around large laundry cartons, one located the shower screen door (and bracingly icy water on even more bouncy tracks).

 From my booth seat in the diner/lounge, now travelling along the spectacular gorges of the Kanawha and New Rivers, green waters reflect the brilliance of Autumnal forest colours on steep opposite banks between intermittent rapids and canoe fishers and small industrial or service towns.

Pratt River, West Virginia

Behind me is a couple of passengers reminiscing about places they have lived. One has escaped the “brutal” winters of Minneapolis for Greensburg KY, the other has escaped Brighton Beach, Long Island for Charleston WV for the outdoorsy life. Also behind me is the conductor, having set up his office in a diner booth, taking radio calls from Amtrak, the Norfolk Southern  Railroad dispatchers and from other trains: checking on times for crossing freight trains at passing sidings along the single track. A regular, strident female voice message comes through with axle counts of freight trains and the reassuring declaration “No Defects, repeat: NO Defects”. The conductor looks around at us: “Smooth as silk, it seems…” Amtrak crew also take breaks here and join work and family gossip, some with regular passengers as well. I’m enjoying listening to that Southern drawwwwlllll…

Mr Minneapolis (who has also wintered in Poland) and Ms Long Island are now debating the origins of Jews and Christians and current destruction in the Middle East. It is a delight to hear a calm debate between strangers in the febrile political atmosphere of the moment.

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Half an hour later and the middle east “debate” is getting more intense. The cafe guy on his break in the opposite booth winks and smiles at me as he leaves: “Heard it all before…” The debaters reach the: “we need to discontinue this” stage and shake hands, parting company and wishing each other a good trip. “God bless…”

By now, the conductor and radio train controller, between “No Defects” train info, are swapping advice on good local places to stay and where they both live. This is getting more interesting…

A third attendant has appeared in the snack bar, preparing orders he will deliver to some coach passengers who are too infirm or disabled to walk the train, and to sleeping car passengers wanting to stay cocooned in their roomettes . It’s a large number of white plastic bags of lunchtime food and drink orders being prepped and zapped for take-out. Like the not-great  reheated “flexible dining”, this is extended delivery service is a hangover from Covid lockdown restrictions, visited upon the small number of remaining Amtrak staff when trains were cut back and thousands of workers were furloughed when travel isolation rules were applied.

Lester, the cafe guy: “You eating? If you stay here, you GOTTA eat!” I’m risking: “Pan Asian Meatballs: plant based protein, Coconut curry sauce, chickpeas, spiced basmati rice, peppers, raisins, cashews.”   Will let you know….

Our conductor receives his next message from radio control: a very matter-of-fact replacement male voice: “Train 350: no defects, repeat no defects.” Conductor’s disappointed face suggests otherwise.

Lunch review: actually pretty good: tasted like meatball texture in a light coconut curry with perfect basmati rice. Lester does big happy dance down the aisle: “I’m tha BAAAST CHEF on Amtrak!!!” Ironic applause from 4 diners.

Conductor has left the cafe car.

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Late afternoon and we are turning north east from Virginia towards Washington DC and New York City, approaching Charlottes-”very-fine-people-on-both-sides”-ville.

The train had been running a half hour ahead of time, so at each passenger stop we’d been granted a “fresh air break”. For such a low-key and infrequent train, it attracts more than a dozen new people at each stop while existing passengers are fast-walking the length of the train, performing stretch routines or just enjoying a socially distanced smoke.

Arriving into Charlottesville has been delayed. In sight of the platform crowded with potential passengers there is “a freight train crossing our tracks”. As we pull in, the immensity of a full-length-platform crowd lines up (and I mean in a neat, orderly queue) with more than 100 new coach class passengers, wait for a single train door to be opened, then  for seat to be assigned and hand written onto cards, then train entry.   

In a town with such a violent recent history, it’s a sunny, somnolent Sunday afternoon. On the platform the weekend visitors are returning to their north east schools, businesses and homes having arrived on Friday afternoon’s train from New York. The small squat-red station house is set at a diamond crossing where two different railroad companies’ tracks cross on the level, is dwarfed by an extensive car park and numbers of farewelling families.

The car attendants and cafe guy are spectacularly good in their highly demanding and sleep-deprived jobs. While waiting for “coach to load” they deign to be photographed before serving an early evening radar meal before I leave the train at Baltimore.

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It was made VERY clear by the tourism website, taxi driver from Penn station and the hotel staff that it’s not safe to go out alone at night, or use mass transit at night, and DO NOT GO to (an extensive list of) suburbs surrounding the Harbour area and adjacent downtown in Baltimore. “You’re staying in the Belly of the Beast,” says the slightly alarming taxi driver, “and your hotel is just there, opposite Disney On Ice.”

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Monday:

 “We’re giving LA a run for its money,” says the Lord Baltimore Hotel concierge. Out in the mean streets in Baltimore, it’s a perfect Autumn day.

Americans often like to “tell their story” on first meeting. I sort of got used to this extended narrative-as-conversation from the “Amtrak Friends”. The hotel diner breakfast was more of a surprise: Blake the barista waves my Qantas card in the air. “I’ve LIVED there for two and a half years. I loved it!” Working a variety of tech and sales jobs from Waterloo in Sydney to tropical Queensland, he just avoided being stranded by Covid in Australia; he wouldn’t have qualified for Job-Keeper support.

On his return to the US he was diagnosed with brain cancer and spent the Covid years isolated but getting excellent care… As I left the diner I could hear Blake briefing the other staff: “That man lives in such a beautiful part of the world…”

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Risking the gangs and the guns and the drugs, (“Open yourself to the Unexpected” promises the city’s tourism website…) I ventured onto the Orange link bus with its (largely) gregarious and helpful drivers travelling west to the Baltimore and Ohio Museum. This is the birthplace of American railroads, also displaying the first ever elegant GM Diesel engine with the classic streamlined nose, once seen across Australia as well as the US and much of the rest of the world.

Amongst a huge display of classic, multicoloured, US steam locomotives with massive cow-catchers and diamond stacks, and long-gone streamlined train service carriages from the 40’s and 50’s was an underlying theme of race relations. Baltimore was on the border of Confederate and free states, so had a free African American population while being a key stop on the “Underground Railroad” where southern slaves were assisted on their escape as “Freedom Seekers” to the North,  using forged papers or even by becoming a large piece of boxed freight in one case. Even a free African American, buying a train ticket required the presence of a free white man and valid documentation. Not arriving early enough to go through a convoluted ticket sales process was deemed an unacceptable excuse for missing a train.

One “Jim Crowe” car from 40 years after the Civil War was displayed: a large “White Passengers Only” section had the heater and its own toilet; the smaller black section had no heating. Even in the 1950’s, “Negroes seeking dining car service” were allocated only two tables in a curtained-off section of the restaurant car. Should white passengers require more tables, non-white passengers were not fed.

The Orange Line Bus was also a bit of an education: one stop after I joined the bus (near the museum dedicated to Irish Navvies who were imported to build the B&Q railroads), a large, loud, distressed woman rushed the doors and sat opposite. In front the rest of the passengers, she began a 15 minute series of phone calls to various welfare agencies (different tone for each, depending on personal need) apologising to one for overspending her welfare allowance (graphic details about vomiting child and promising, PROMISING, to visit her welfare worker after the methadone appointment to Sort It OUT!)

On a subsequent bus trip I realised why not to sit up the back of the Orange Line bus: that is where the begging for food money took place. 

The rest of the day was a lovely wander around the Harbour and Federal Hill Park (proud memorials to the military leader who repelled the British during the American Revolutionary War, and to celebrate Maryland becoming part of the Union in 1788).

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Tuesday: not unhappy to be booked out of the perfect Autumn weather but heavy pervading atmosphere of Baltimore (“Charm City”).

I’m travelling to South Carolina on the “Palmetto” train to visit Lori and Dave in Myrtle Beach for a few days, then on to Miami before flying out to Warsaw (Poland, not Indiana). Lori is a friend of about 55 years, starting as a high school pen friend. My departure will be over a week before the election (on Melbourne Cup Day), on her advice due to strong concerns about what may happen whichever way the Electoral College votes will fall.

I’ve been well prepared for a Myrtle Beach visit through Christmas packages of books over the last few years. In addition I have been promised a visit to the Gay Dolphin (!) and something called: “Suck-Bang-Blow Biker Burnout Bar(!!). I’ll let you know...

In the meantime, I’m plonked on the big traditional wooden railroad benches at the moderately grand Baltimore Penn Station as my train has been delayed by 20 minutes, under three domed skylights. Opposite me is a small, elderly black woman, perched on the bench next to her sleeping adult son. The Good Book is lying open on her black-clad knees for morning Bible study using her phone. She crouches and carefully marks the texts and reads along with the phone voice, completing each section with a loud: “AYmen…AYY-MENNNN!!!”

The arriving train is announced. I do as instructed by the ebullient Amtrak Baggage Check in Guy: “Just follo’ yo’ bags on tha’ trolley down to tha end a’ tha’ train and y’all find yo’ seat.

I do.

#Amtrak #AMTRAK #Chicago #Baltimore #Cardinal #USA #Milwaukee #TrainTravel