reflections

My favorite southern humorist, the late Lewis Grizzard, explained the popularity of his books this way: “Writing is easy. I just remember stuff that never happened.” I am invoking Grizzard’s wit because what I’m about to write is so unbelievable that you might be tempted to think I made it up. But it actually happened.

Recently, I checked off a bucket list item, which means I only have 141 more to go before I do. The adventure was a train trip from the mountains of northeast Georgia to Manhattan and then along the Hudson to Montreal. It began on a surprisingly crowded midnight train from Georgia. The conductor directed me to the last open seat. It was next to a man who had surrounded himself with a fortress of bags.

I was taking this trip solo, treating AMTRAK® as a rolling monastery for a time of blessed introversion. It almost worked. However, trying to sleep in the seat next to a loud food mainstay proved to be a more uncomfortable experience than most Trappist beds I’ve endured.

Then things got worse. As the sun began its day, I “awoke” from the few hours of tortured “rest” to discover something devasting. My seatmate was an extravert who apparently had never met a wannabe monk. However, it wasn’t long until my disappointment turned into fascination. George was a short, round man in the fourth quarter of life. With his initial sentences, I began the first of four provocative conversations. Each interaction was with an amazingly good man who had encountered remarkably bad possessors of power.

The names of my story partners? Well, that is the first thing you might not believe. After George, I met Paul, “Ringo,” and John—each with the lyrics and tunes the world needs to hear. George had finished two full careers. For about a quarter of a century, he had worked his way to Master Sargeant in the Air Force. His job was ensuring massive C-5s were loaded with enough fuel to carry their cargo. After his military retirement, he began a second career as a conductor for AMTRAK.

George had more stories than Boston has beans. For the sake of word count, I’ll only share one, which started with his question, “Do you know why the rails on these tracks are always four feet, eight and one-half inches apart? I did not. So, he told me with glee. Apparently, the reason for this factoid runs all the way back to the time Conestoga wagons were bouncing on the Oregon Trail and back to the era of Roman chariots. Early railroad builders decided to use the existing ruts of wagon and chariot wheels. Evidently, four feet, eight and one-half inches happen to be the optimal distance between the exhaust systems of two horses if they are properly yoked together.

George was a fountain of fun facts and had the kind eyes of a loving husband and father. For example, one Christmas, he paid for a taxi to drive a grandmother more than 100 miles so she could spend Christmas night with her grandchildren instead of being stranded in a nearly deserted train station. But George was no stranger to bad people who had abused their positions of authority, like the commanding officer who required George to take on a big part of his responsibilities because the Colonel enjoyed playing golf more than doing math.

George began keeping the battalion’s books with only one “must do:” “No matter how many hundreds of thousands of dollars you have saved us over the year, don’t ever report left-over funds!” So, George was commanded to go on a spending spree at the end of each fiscal year. Now, I have a better idea about those $500.00 hammers the military is known for purchasing.

However, the badness apparently went further up the chain of command. During his second career, George became the conductor for the NYC to Washington, DC route. Oh, the stories he had about congressional conversations and the favorite locations for their three-martini lunches. His favorite story was about a former senator showing him a letter from a major car insurance company. “Look at this,” he said to George. “These folks will contribute $80,000 to my campaign funds every time I vote ‘No’ for whatever AMTRAK requests.” Hmmm.

My second conversation partner was Paul, a middle-aged African-American man I sat with in the Café car. We began talking over breakfast but kept the sentences flying all the way through lunch.

Paul lives in Delaware but recently drove a U-Haul to Georgia to help his friend move to the Peach State. Unfortunately, a mechanical problem required him to hop on AMTRAK for his return home. Like George, Paul seemed to be a genuinely good man. His warm relationship with his wife was evident through a few phone conversations I heard across the table. His two sons made the trip with Paul, and they clearly loved their father.

As it turns out, Paul is very musical and a platinum recording artist. Well, he wrote the song, but his son, 12 at the time, did the singing. Paul showed me the song on my iTunes account. We listened. It was remarkably good and had been the title track for a film. In case I had any lingering doubts about the veracity of his story, he showed me a photo of himself and his son standing next to a well-known musical artist. All three had glowing smiles on their faces.

… I could not help but wonder if he, like George, had also been too close to a person possessing great power and willing to abuse the imbalance he held over another.

I then realized that the third person in the picture was someone later accused of gross misconduct. I asked if the famous producer was who I thought he was. Paul said, “Yes,” and his countenance seemed to change to the extent that I could not help but wonder if he, like George, had also been too close to a person possessing great power and willing to abuse the imbalance he held over another. I followed by sheepishly asking if he and his son were making any more music these days. His one-syllable response, delivered with a stoic face, was, “No.”

“Ringo” was not the given name of the third person I encountered. But it seems like a fair moniker. After all, the original “Ringo’s” name is Richard Starkey, and he picked up his nickname because he liked to wear rings while pounding on drums. The given name of the “Ringo” I met will remain anonymous, but the origin of his nickname has a similar “ring.” He told me: “I love to wear earrings. But I have to take them out when I go home to the Dominican Republic or my Catholic grandfather will rip them out of my ears. I’m not kidding!”

Fair enough. I’m going with “Ringo.” Ringo was a young Hispanic cab driver with a shy smile and a sleeve of tattoos on both arms. Once in the cab, he told me a traffic jam would add at least 40 minutes to our 10-minute drive to Central Station. After about five minutes passed, Ringo began to share his thoughts about the upcoming (now past) election. Along the way, I learned he was a very engaged father and compassionate husband, working 60 hours a week to provide for his family.

Ringo was driving a cab because he had invested more than $200,000.00 to get into the truck driving business just before “diesel fuel jumped to $6.00 a gallon.” Then, the government began telling him that he would soon need to trade in his truck for a $500,000.00 electric version. “Can you imagine that?” Ringo asked. “As a businessman, you have to wonder: ‘Who would be able to afford to buy what I’m hauling?’”

Before I could answer, he began telling me about his wife’s frustrations at school. She had recently decided to pursue a college degree to help the family. “She is taking these business classes,” he began. “And now, she is in her fourth class where the professor has not yet talked about what is in the syllabus—business and accounting. Each of her professors is part of the LGBTQ community, and all they ever talk about is their sex lives.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that statement in any way that resembled political correctness, so I let some silence fill the cab. Ringo continued: “Don’t get me wrong. My wife and I aren’t ‘for’ one group over another. And we don’t care what a person does in the privacy of their home. But, please, just teach what she is paying to learn.”

Later in the conversation, I asked Ringo which was his preferred description—Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish—the word he had been using. He smiled back over the front seat before putting his eyes back on the street and responding. “Oh, we don’t give a (insert expletive here) about that. We just want to be around good people who treat us with respect, like you are doing. That’s what matters. That, and being allowed to pursue common-sense solutions to what is best for our families.” I think Ringo gave me some insight into the country’s political pulse, which most commentators and pundits missed by a mile.

After another 12 hours on a train, I arrived in Montreal. The next day, I began a seven-kilometer walk from my hotel to the top of Mount Royal (Mont-real, get it?). I took this walk with the final destination being the 103-foot cross that crowns the top of the mountain overlooking Montreal. By that point, I was ready for the silence of a slow, reflective, labyrinth-inspired walk.

The day was sunny and beautiful. The winding trail wove through a forest filled with trees waving at the hikers with bright yellow and red leaves. At the top, the trail ended at a building featuring a café and restrooms. I took a seat in one of the two unoccupied Adirondack chairs to rest and enjoy the continued solitude. But within a few minutes, it was broken. A man who looked much like a 60-year-old Jesus sat down next to me.

When he announced that he was fulfilling the life’s mission he had been given several decades ago by “God, my guiding angel, a higher power, whatever you want to call the real voice from an invisible source,” well, he had my attention. I turned my chair to hear his story better. It was riveting. The “Voice” had charged him to help churches return from internal politics and power grabs to doing the two things most important. “To become again,” the Voice said, “places where people can learn to be genuinely good and celebrate the joy of life with others.”

His story should be a book. His character was not unlike Francis of Assisi. And he had apparently achieved some measure of success with the help of a few cooperative churches. When our two-hour conversation ended, he asked me if he could take a “selfie” of the two of us. As he stood up, I began to think how much I hoped his name would be John and how our conversation had occurred within the shadow of the giant Mount Royal cross I had set out to see.

As he turned back around, I said, “Uh, I don’t even know your name.” He responded, “Jeanne Pierre. You know, John Peter.” Of course, I thought. But then, he took off his heavy coat, and I saw the words “Santa Cruz” on his T-shirt, which translates to “Sacred Cross.”

Walking back down the mountain, I began to reflect on the lyrics of the four “Beatles” I had met. Life tunes from four ordinary men who “sang” quietly of their own goodness but also, indirectly, of the badness of others in positions of power. Four songs about the human heart.

Goodness, I mused, is not found in gender, culture, political party, or pigmentation, nor is evil. Each destination begins with the orientation of the will. Evil is imposing one’s will on others or institutions for selfish gain. And the only solution is found at the top of a mountain. At the Santa Cruz. ?

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