Squirrel on the Crescent

The prospect of a new experience influenced my decision to travel by train from Spartanburg, South Carolina to a conference in New Orleans. Having never before ridden a train, I expected a scenic trip but saw mostly backyards in slummy parts of towns, loading docks, forests of pine trees, beer cans, plastic bags, rusting cars and discarded machinery. For me, the most interesting thing about train travel turned out to be the passengers, who have in common one characteristic: punctuality is not required. The Crescent was four hours late on my departure from Spartanburg and three hours late a week later when we pulled out of the New Orleans station on the northbound leg. Oh well, I rationalized, that’s part of the experience. I’d calculated that the trip would take about the same time whether by car (my usual mode) or jet so why not have a novel adventure.

In part, my choice was driven by images from old movies where train travel is depicted romantically. For example, in dining cars, exquisite meals are served in luxurious settings by nattily dressed attendants. Polished silverware and plush linen napkins surround fine china. Politics and business transactions intermingle with polite conversations. Men in smoking jackets wearing ascots flirt with women whose expensive tastes are obviously sated with glittering jewels. Secret agents and criminals cautiously eye each other. I was looking forward to eating in the dining car.

As the lunch hour approached, I left my seat and strolled through the aisles toward the dining car. However, my destination could be reached only by squeezing through the corridor adjacent to the smokers’ lounge where anxious passengers were barely visible in a deadly blue haze. Not my kind of people, I thought as I hurried past holding my breath. My kind of people will be in the dining car.

Every table in the dining car was empty when I arrived. “Good,” I thought. “I can study my fellow travelers as I eat.” A waiter led me to a table where I slipped in next to the window and began to peruse the well-worn menu, when to my surprise, the waiter seated another patron directly across from me even though we were the only two passengers in the dining car. Unnerved by having a total stranger so close when so much space was available elsewhere, I struggled to discover the logic of the waiter’s seating strategy. Before I could address the issue, I was distracted the motions of my fellow diner who removed a pair of reading glasses from the bib of his coveralls. He was an elderly black man who had already removed his cap to reveal short kinky hair graying at the temples. He moved his index finger slowly along each line of the plastic coated menu. With his head cocked to one side, he appeared to be mustering all his intellect to grasp the choices lying before him. His skin was a deep chocolate, that of a black man who has spent considerable time in the sun. His hands and arms were small and sinewy and proportional to his taut slender body. His white shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, poked above the blue of his overalls. His eyes were bleary distortions behind those reading glasses with sturdy brown frames.

He continued to study the menu like a person who can’t read but wants to convince an observer that he is literate. That’s what I suspected, especially since I didn’t believe it possible for any image to be in sharp focus viewed through those greasy lenses. Then I noticed a little plastic sticker with “+4” in the upper corner of the left lens. Strong lenses, I thought to myself. They must be new since the sticker is still attached, yet how could new glasses have gotten so impossibly dirty?

Now convinced that the old man was merely pretending to read the menu, I tried to create an opportunity to assist him without making him feel inferior. I mused aloud, “I’m having trouble deciding between the fried chicken and the hamburger steak. That club sandwich looks good, too.” Pleased to have slyly provided the old fellow with three dining possibilities, I waited for a response.

“They’re OK. I’ve had ‘em all. Think I’m gonna have me some grilled fish today.”

I glanced at the menu for verification. So he can read!

“Sounds like you’ve been on the Crescent before,” I said.

“Oh yes. Many times.” He looked over his glasses at me.

“This is only my second time on a train,” I said.

“I could tell. You was surprised to have company at this table when all the others was empty.”

“Yes, I was,” I confessed.

“That’s just the routine. Them waiters knows that pretty soon a bunch a people be coming in here for lunch so they starts at one table and fills in every seat, one by one. That way, people at each table start and finish at ‘bout the same time so tables clear out in order. It works but it means that you don’t get to eat by yourself. That’s OK by me. Meet some interesting folks that way.”

“I bet you do!” I said, marveling that I had just done so myself.

“So, what you gonna eat, young man?” he inquired.

“What do you recommend?”

“Not the poke chops. You might try that hamburger steak and some mashed taters. Stick to yo ribs. Help you sleep if you want to,” he advised.

“No, I want to stay awake, look out the window, take it all in. I don’t know when I’ll ever have the chance to ride a train again.”

“Then you want a salat and some sweet tea. Salats ain’t bad on the northbound Crescent. “

“That sounds like good advice. Thanks,” I said.

Other diners were arriving and tables were filling just as my new friend said they would.

After the waiter had taken our orders, I felt relaxed enough to say “You still have the sticker on your new glasses. I can peel it off for you if you like.”

“No, thank you. I leave it on there on purpose. Next time I have to buy me some glasses, I know what power I need. Had these for a couple months but my eyes must be gettin’ worser and worser. What’s the number on these?”

“Plus 4.”

“Reckon I’ll have to go to the next stronger version next time I’m in Walmarts.”

“Let me have a look at them,” I ventured.

He slipped them off and handed them to me, careful not to bump our glasses of sweet tea. After breathing heavily on each lens, I rubbed them vigorously with my napkin, being careful to leave the Plus 4 sticker in place. Even after three long “haaaahs” followed by extended rubbing, I succeed in removing only part of the oily film. I passed the glasses noticeably cleaner back to the old man who immediately tried them out on a newspaper he had brought with him.

“God dog it, young man!” he exclaimed. “I can see good now. I’m moan hafta buy you lunch with the money I woulda spent on new glasses.”

“Oh no,” I protested. “I’m just glad to help. Besides, you helped me first by suggesting this fine salad” which arrived just then.

“Yep, the Crescent has good salats on the northbound. They get good vetchtables in Nawlins on the turn around. I don’t order salats on the southbound. I don’t like the vetchtables they pick up in New York.”

“Are you going to New York?”

“Not this trip. I get off in Charlotte. Gonna see my Saints whup dem Panthers on Sunday.”

“Really?” My voice must have betrayed my surprise that a man of his age in coveralls would be traveling by train to see an NFL game four states away. This seemed as unlikely to me as the Saints winning against the Panthers at home.

“Yep. I go to all the Saints’ home games and most of the away games now that I’m retired and my wife died. Been to San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, bunch a different places. Mostly by train, ‘cept for San Francisco. Train is more my speed. Planes too fast. People in a hurry. Eat with yo elbows all scrunched in like a crab. Plastic forks. Not for me. I like trains. I’m in no hurry, plus I gets to meet some nice folks, like you.”

I smiled. So here’s a retiree who routinely and preferentially takes the train for some of the same reasons I have.

“Today is Thursday and the game’s on Sunday,” I observed.

“Yep. I like to get into town early. Walk around a bit. Get the feel of the place.”

“Where will you stay?” I asked, expecting to learn of relatives in Charlotte who would humor the old fellow for a few days.

“Oh, I always get me a hotel close to the stadium. I make sure they have the cominennal breakfast that has eggs and sausage.”

“I know what you mean. Those continental breakfasts of corn flakes and doughnuts don’t satisfy me for long.” I hoped he had heard my correct pronunciation of continental.

“Game tickets, train tickets, hotels and food” I went on. “That must be expensive.” I fished for an explanation.

“It is, but I can afford it. I’m a retired longshoreman. You familiar with longshorin’?”

“No, I’m not,” I said, though I had a vague notion that it had something to do with ships and cargo.

“Well, it’s a tough job. Takes a real man to be a longshoreman and stick with it.”

I could sense his pride.

“Gotta be strong and quick and stay alert else you get hurt or get one of yo buddies hurt. Have to work real smooth as a team.” He sat more erect now and his small tough hands rounded into fists as he spoke. “You ever see a container ship?” he asked.

“Are they those huge ships coming from places like China and Taiwan, loaded with stacks and layers of metal boxes?”

“You got it. When a container ship come into port, somebody gotta get all them containers off it. That’s what I did. My buddy operatin’ the crane would drop the cable down to me. My paticalar job was to climb up on them containers and set hooks on the fou’ corners. Then I get outta the way as the crane man lift that box and set it down on the dock. It’s hard hot work in the summer, ‘specially when you setting hooks on them containers way down deep in that ship. Ain’t no breeze stirrin’ down there. In the winter, it can be mighty cold. Cables gets stiff. Sometimes they be ice and snow on them boxes. Make ‘em sliiiiiick, sliiiick, sliiiick. And you in there, settin’ hooks and jumpin’ over to the next box. Sometimes the crane man cain’t even see you, you be way down in a hole. Ain’t got no time to mosey around neither. Bossman wants that ship unloaded quick so they can get on with they next run. Dangerous work. Lotta guys, big strong guys, cain’t take it. Lord didn’t give me a big body but that’s well and good ‘cause I’m quick and nimble and I can shimmy into places where other guys cain’t go. I did it for 34 years. Made good money. Union money. Got me a good pension. And when Elsie died, that insurance policy paid off. Course I’d ratha have her than the money. She was fine company. And that woman could cook. Lord, could she cook. Considerin’ how much o’ her good cookin’ I ate, I guess I had to be a longshoreman just to work it off. If I’d a had some sorta desk job, I’d be big as a barn the way that woman fed me. Good food. She tended a little garden patch. Grew collarts, t’maters, beans, squash, cucummers, cannalottes. Good stuff! I miss it.”

He paused, apparently savoring those mounds of home-grown vegetables placed before him while I imagined Elsie in a ragged apron emerging from a tiny kitchen where lids jiggled as vegetables boiled in dented pots on a stove surrounded by cupboards swaying with jars of preserves crammed into rickety columns behind a red and white checkered curtain.

“Anyhow, as I was sayin’, I retired from longshorin’ bout the time Elsie died. Along about then, my son say he want to be a truck driver. Read them ads in the paper bout truck driving and get it into his head he has to own his own truck. But he ain’t got no money so I bought him a truck with some o’ his momma’s insurance money. Got him a big one. He love it. Been haulin’ container boxes, sittin’ on his lazy fat ass up in that air-conditioned cab (he call it a “tractor”) while somebody else load the container for him. When he was about seventeen, I took him to work with me. Let him try out longshorin’. He didn’t last a week. Too much work and sweat for the boy. He was bigger than me. Got that from his momma. She was a big woman, but not overly big. Anyhow, I reckon that boy of mine won’t cut out to be a longshoreman but he’s got to feed his own face so I bought him that truck. Don’t see him much now, ‘cept when he come by wanting some home grown collarts cooked Elsie-style with little jiblets of poke chops sprinkled in. When she was here, she tried to show me how but I won’t payin’ no attention. Wish I had. Now I’m havin’ to figure out how to cook the way she did, and I ain’t exactly hit on it yet.”

“That was very generous of you to buy your son a truck,” I interjected.

“I know it was, but my buddies didn’t think it was a good idea. They say ‘Squirrel, you don’t need to be buying that boy a truck. You be throwin’ yo money away. How long you think he gone stick with truck drivin’?’ Well, he’s been drivin’ that thing about fou’ year now. Seem happy. Don’t complain much, so I reckon he be alright.”

“Who is Squirrel?” I asked.

“That would be me. Real name is William Earl Thigpen. Elsie call me Earl. Everybody else call me Squirrel.”

“How did you get that name?” I inquired.

I was surprised by the intensity of his answer. “I earned it!” he boasted, his chest bulging inside his coveralls.

“How?”

“Well, we was unloading this ship. Doin’ it at our usual pretty good clip. Me and Slick and the crane man Tim. Slick and me was setting hooks. Having a good morning. Teamwork. We was a good team, work real good together. Anyhow, we offloaded all the Nawlins cargo and left that what was supposed to go on to Galveston. See, sometimes a ship like that stops at a couple ports. This paticalar one was to go on to Galveston. Anyhow, as I was sayin’ we got done with our part right before lunch so we was sittin’ on our usual bench eatin’ our sammiches when Slick start shakin’ his head and say ‘Got dammit!’ Well, I knowed something bad wrong cause it take a lot to make Slick cuss. He have a lot of Baptist in him. So I say ‘What the matter, Slick?’ ‘Wallet’s gone,’ he say. ‘Where you think it is?’ I say. ‘In the belly of that got-damm ship that’s going on to Galveston. Got a hunnert and sixty dollars in it. My lunch money and beer money for the next two weeks.”