By Reverend Donna Schaper
On Tuesday night, May 17th, I took the 6:45 Metro-North train from Grand Central Station to Poughkeepsie. I often take that train and usually spend the first ten minutes through the tunnel to 125th Street asleep. The train is quiet and dark
AN INTIMATE VENUE WITH THE STAGE CLOSE TO THE AUDIENCE: The Five Spot Cafe at 2 St. Marks Place, where Thelonius Monk and Charles Mingus were becoming famous.
then and it is a nice ritual for one such as me. I am a city mouse and a country mouse, with a place here in the city and a partner who works in Hartford and who keeps a place for us near Cold Spring. We sometimes even confront the commuting exhaustions and anti-intimacies by meeting there mid-week. He even brings the dog down the platform to the train. The dog wags its tail too.
On this particular night, the train stopped for about 45 minutes in the tunnel. I was aware of the stoppage in my hazed daze but didn’t think much about it. I could tell they were saying something on the loud speaker, which as usual, did not work. I have long ago learned to ignore the conductor.
On this night, I was in the last car and could see the conductor from my second-row seat. I woke up to the sounds of grumbling passengers, one of whom had walked into the conductor’s car and was all but harassing him. “Why don’t you tell us what is going on? Why aren’t we moving? We pay your salary! I am going to get you fired.” The conductor was visibly shaking. He said, quietly and firmly, “Right now I am on the radio trying to find out how to back us out of this tunnel. We have to get out of here right now. There is a fire on the track ahead and all the trains are turning around and backing up. This is a very delicate maneuver and I don’t know how to do it. And I can’t hear the radio anyway. PLEASE stop screaming at me.” My last-car seat had become my first-car seat.
We are less than an hour into a difficulty, which impacted 150,000 riders trying to get home that night. Already the loud speaker isn’t working and the train radio isn’t working. The angry passenger was joined by dozens of other passengers who started yelling at the conductor, making his audibility problem worse. “Tell us what is going on.” By that time, enough passengers had identified the source of the fire on their cell phones to start a whisper campaign that said there was a fire under the tracks at 108th street or 118th, mattering not where because it was between us and 125th Street.
We started to back up. Ever so slowly. Painfully slow. People began gathering their bags and putting their things together. We didn’t know the size of the trouble till we actually got off the train and realized that all the trains going in and out were cancelled and that there was no floor space inside the great station on which to stand. As we got off the train, I looked at the conductor’s face. It was almost white, even though his skin color was the opposite color. His hands were still shaking. I asked him if he had ever backed a train up in the tunnel before. He said yes and said he wouldn’t like to do it every day.
As I walked out of the station that night to try to get a Citi Bike (they were all already gone), there were people running into the station. Just like there are every night. Hoping to make the 8:02. Imagine their surprise when they find out it’s not running tonight.
My learnings from this are three. One is I am grateful for how often Metro-North actually does work and is usually on time. Second is that I wish attention were paid to the loud speakers and the train radios before something truly terrible happens and all people can do is yell at each other. Third, I am going to pay more attention to the conductor from now on.
