On the sleeping car to Tulsa

I don’t know what kind of train it was, but it could have been an Amtrak or a Rock Island or anything. We were huddled together in a sleeping car, our family headed to Tulsa.  I remember lying by the window and watching with fascination as our train clattered past what seemed like every town in America.

I remember the neon signs.  There were planted like so much corn and soybean - Coca Cola, Pepsi, RC Cola. I’m sure there were beer signs too, but I was too young to recognize them.  But it was the sense of isolation I felt in these towns that left a profound impression on me.  Their taverns and frame houses, mom and pop stores, and empty spaces.  The more dismal and remote they were, the more they interested me. I don’t know why – they just did.

There were Edward Hopper diners near the railroad tracks with small town people clustered around the counter. Frame houses with tarpaper walls. And businesses that had tiny windows on upper floors where people lived.  Real people a world away and yet right next to us.

The images I recall now are in the monochromatic tones of my memories from the sixties. It was eerily soothing on that train, like looking out the window of a spaceship into the vastness of space. Protected from the loneliness and the vacuum of those small towns - and it felt comforting.

Last night I traveled to a small town in Michigan.  I inadvertly drove through different neighborhoods, looking for a gas station.  As I wandered, I found a town that looked like a skinny kid who dressed in ill-fitting, outdated clothes but couldn’t afford anything that looked or fit better.  Everywhere, it was evident that there had been no real growth here in decades.

It was surprisingly dismal, even though the protective Michigan trees tried to conceal the fact with their fall ochres and reds.  There were run-down taverns in residential neighborhoods where they shouldn’t be.  Shabby stores with things in the windows that were faded and uninteresting.  As I drove around, I glanced at the small windows in the upper floors of businesses and houses with sagging front porches.  I felt the vacuum and the isolation.  And an unexpected sadness.

One of every eight people in Michigan receives some form of government assistance. Real unemployment levels in towns like this approach 27%, not the 9.5% national average. Youth unemployment numbers are as high as 60%. Those statistics resemble what used to be seen on Indian reservations in places like Oklahoma. Americans thought it reflected poor education, substance abuse, and too much government assistance. And now it’s here in the heartland.

I think back to the sleeping car on the train, and the black and white images as they blur by.  Many of the places I stared at through the windows of the train winding through Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas seemed unreal and even exotic.  On that train, it felt more like the Polar Express or the train to Hogwarts.  Not like the ride here in the real world and in this town.