Southbound

Humanity on a late night train ride.

One A.M. 
The C & S train is pulling
Out of Radnor Yards
Headed Southbound.
Though four miles distant
And winter, late and warm,
You lie feeling the rumble of
The steel in your marrow.
You stare at the ceiling.
Train tracks now visible
In aerial view you trace it’s path
Down I-65 and under in Brentwood.
Now west of Interstate 
It rumbles, gently rolling
Like a ship under good steam 
In a gentle sea
Through the rolling hills of Franklin.

In college once after burnt red-eyed exams
You rode the southbound, the “Floridian,”
From under crumpling roofed train shed
At Union Station where lean and sleek shadows
Moved between the lights and the steam.
Suspicious, but too tired to care 
You boarded and fell asleep.
Only to awaken to the gentle ferry-like rolling or
One side straining and the other responding as 
You threaded your way softly southbound.
Activity in the bar car and with guitar in hand
You ambled aft.

A Vietnam veteran with one leg half gone
And pretty blond stringy haired hippie girl
Laughed at the bar.
Peanuts and warm beer set the mood:
Congenial and American.
He wears fatigues, one leg neatly buttoned at the knee,
A claymore necessitated tailoring.
She wears jeans, Thai dye, headband. 
You are proper, shorthaired preppy ROTC type,
But there is the guitar.
Beers later a common bond in the music and the train.
Just three souls sifting through our lives,
Heading southbound.

Dawn comes to your window seat early.
Vet and hippie slept in a booth.
Politely, you returned to your seat.
Clackety clack of trestle bridge over 
Marshland north of Montgomery.
Fish and waterfowl scatter as the vibrating
Restless trestle shatters the morning calm.
The train turning East, bearing in on Dothan.
The sun burning through the tinted glass
Warming the white plastic headrest covers.

Balance is difficult as with beer-full bladder
You head aft again.
First stop the rest room.
In there you can stand and relieve, wedged
Between the patterned steel sideboard and the window.
Better.
Then back to the bar car.
Old white haired man in ill-fitting jacket serving breakfast:
Coffee black, eggs over easy, limp bacon, buttery thin toast in neat triangles,
And the Savior of Southern Culture, grits.
Dothan and morning confusion as passengers eject at the station.
Searching for grandmother you hold tight to the guitar.
You pass the Vet, now hippieless, who implores you to “keep the faith.”

It’s been over thirty years now,
And in the unending mystery of time I lie wondering
Where they are and if I did.
In time I will know,
I will see when I am, once again,
Headed southbound.

The Floridian ran from 1971-1979. It started in Chicago, passed through Nashville and ultimately split in the state of Florida, with one train going to Miami and the other to St. Petersburg. I rode her a couple of times to see my Grandmother in Marianna, Florida. I would disembark in Dothan, Alabama and she would pick me up. This trip was Thanksgiving, 1978, so it’s been 47-years now since that ride.

I thought about this piece earlier today because of a convergence of events. The first was learning from a former student that his uncle had passed away and that he was a Vietnam veteran, and as he put it, “he was a good and kind man, but I don’t think he ever got over it.” I think about that time often because it is not dissimilar to what we are going through now. The war ended in April, 1975. I entered NROTC in August, 1976 and the echoes of the war and the anti-war movement were still very fresh. We were told not to wear our uniforms when we traveled. No one got a rawer deal than the men and women who fought that nasty war and were betrayed in the execution of the war by the politicians and by the people for the way they were treated when they came home.

The second event that brought all this to bear was seeing a homeless man this afternoon, panhandling at a street corner. He had a prosthetic leg and judging by his age I am pretty sure he is another one of our veterans that we sent into twenty years of forever wars only to withdraw in ignominy. Betrayed again by the political class and though treated better by the population, war still breaks you, how can it not? We owe it to our veterans who chose to give their very best, our very best and we are not doing that right now.

So, as we enter the final week of Advent and prepare for the celebration of God becoming man, let us not forget our own humanity and the capacity to love, forgive and serve one another.