Travels in the Happy Car
Woken up at 7.00 by the overly-chirpy announcement that "this station is Little Rock"! Actually we should have been in Little Rock almost four hours ago, so maybe he's just pleased we made it at all. I am on Amtrak, travelling across a part of America that makes Crown Point, Indiana look exciting: swathes of flat, colourless terrain interrupted only by the occasional trailer park. Only the St Louis skyline breaks the monotony - it's very beautiful, and the only big city we see until we pull into Dallas, six hours behind schedule.
We are in carriage 2130, room 2. I can tell you who was in ever other room of carriage 2130 too, if you ever feel the need to know, as our car attendant, in an attempt to find us a souvenir, autographed for us her list of her charges.
Phyllis, our attendant, has been working on Amtrak for 24 years but has apparently never met anyone from England before. Once she'd found out she told everyone who passed her in the corridor, as though we'd told her we'd flown straight out of Neverland, "they're from ENGLAND!" Some feigned interest, but most didn't bother. She greeted everyone in a style I haven't come across since I last visited Butlins, shouting down the corridor "I'M PHYLLIS AND I'M GONNA BE HERE TO GIVE Y'ALL A GOOD TIME! YOU'RE TRAVELLING IN CAR 2130! I CALL THIS THE HAPPY CAR! WHAT DO I CALL IT?" A few people shouted back, but we hadn't got the hang of it all yet.
Amtrak is a good place to meet new people, partly because there's nothing to do on board, not even look at the scenery, because in the case of the Midwest there's not much scenery to speak of, and anyway we spent more interminable hours sitting outside corrugated-iron-roofed stations waiting for freight to shift than we spent tearing through the countryside. Among others we met a guy who didn't give us his name (he looked like a Bob to me) but who wore a cowboy hat and told us he and his wife were in the oil business, swiftly followed by how he loved Our Mr Blair. F and I don't love Our Mr Blair so we tried to be non-committal. Fortunately the conversation came to an abrupt end when he asked "so, y'all married?" We're not. Oops.
Back in The Happy Car Phyllis has been looking for sounvenirs and has come up with some Amtrak-branded cutlery ("Don't tell anyone I took it!"), some soap of a brand I've never heard of and a jar of instant coffee ("you just add water!" she added, in apparent disbelief of the miracles of science. Then she repeated this information in case we couldn't believe it either, and pointed excitedly to the instructions.) In return she would like us to send her a postcard of Princess Diana and another of Westminster Abbey. She gets rather emotional when I tell her I've met the queen (briefly), but tells us she doesn't like Prince Charles, whom she's sure murdered Diana. She asks where I met the Queen and is even more excited when I tell her I went to her church, because apparently she thought we were all heathens. This opinion is confirmed when we tell her that we teach evolution in our schools without much of a hint of protest from anybody.
We finally arrive in Dallas at 4pm, the only consolation being we got a free lunch we didn't have to pay for. We have left Phyllis with a pound coin and twenty-pence piece, with which she is delighted because they have the queen on them. She leaves us with some teabags, soap, napkins and cutlery bearing the Amtrak logo, a signed list of Happy Car passengers and a plastic jar of instant coffee ("you just add water!")
We are in carriage 2130, room 2. I can tell you who was in ever other room of carriage 2130 too, if you ever feel the need to know, as our car attendant, in an attempt to find us a souvenir, autographed for us her list of her charges.
Phyllis, our attendant, has been working on Amtrak for 24 years but has apparently never met anyone from England before. Once she'd found out she told everyone who passed her in the corridor, as though we'd told her we'd flown straight out of Neverland, "they're from ENGLAND!" Some feigned interest, but most didn't bother. She greeted everyone in a style I haven't come across since I last visited Butlins, shouting down the corridor "I'M PHYLLIS AND I'M GONNA BE HERE TO GIVE Y'ALL A GOOD TIME! YOU'RE TRAVELLING IN CAR 2130! I CALL THIS THE HAPPY CAR! WHAT DO I CALL IT?" A few people shouted back, but we hadn't got the hang of it all yet.
Amtrak is a good place to meet new people, partly because there's nothing to do on board, not even look at the scenery, because in the case of the Midwest there's not much scenery to speak of, and anyway we spent more interminable hours sitting outside corrugated-iron-roofed stations waiting for freight to shift than we spent tearing through the countryside. Among others we met a guy who didn't give us his name (he looked like a Bob to me) but who wore a cowboy hat and told us he and his wife were in the oil business, swiftly followed by how he loved Our Mr Blair. F and I don't love Our Mr Blair so we tried to be non-committal. Fortunately the conversation came to an abrupt end when he asked "so, y'all married?" We're not. Oops.
Back in The Happy Car Phyllis has been looking for sounvenirs and has come up with some Amtrak-branded cutlery ("Don't tell anyone I took it!"), some soap of a brand I've never heard of and a jar of instant coffee ("you just add water!" she added, in apparent disbelief of the miracles of science. Then she repeated this information in case we couldn't believe it either, and pointed excitedly to the instructions.) In return she would like us to send her a postcard of Princess Diana and another of Westminster Abbey. She gets rather emotional when I tell her I've met the queen (briefly), but tells us she doesn't like Prince Charles, whom she's sure murdered Diana. She asks where I met the Queen and is even more excited when I tell her I went to her church, because apparently she thought we were all heathens. This opinion is confirmed when we tell her that we teach evolution in our schools without much of a hint of protest from anybody.
We finally arrive in Dallas at 4pm, the only consolation being we got a free lunch we didn't have to pay for. We have left Phyllis with a pound coin and twenty-pence piece, with which she is delighted because they have the queen on them. She leaves us with some teabags, soap, napkins and cutlery bearing the Amtrak logo, a signed list of Happy Car passengers and a plastic jar of instant coffee ("you just add water!")
posted by RLS at 2:29 pm
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