Casey Jones Slept Here
Posted at 6:11 AM on November 16, 2009
by Dale Connelly
(24 Comments)
This just in! Radio Heartland has tickets for you to attend a performance by the Hot Club of Cowtown at the Dakota in Minneapolis on Wednesday, November 18th.
Enter the drawing.
We'll notify winners after 1pm on Tuesday. Good luck!
Thanks to our Radio Heartland guest bloggers last week, Kay, Anna, Don, Joanne and Tim! It's a pleasure to read your posts and comments, and if anyone else would like to be considered as a guest blogger in the future, nominate yourself with an e-mail sent to dale@radioheartland.org.
All the local news buzz today is about the launch of the Northstar Commuter Rail line from Big Lake to Downtown Minneapolis. Just about every media outlet has a journalist riding a train on "opening day", but Radio Heartland has no news staff to speak of. All we have is freelance "info-tainment personality" Bud Buck, who (grudgingly) filed this report:
5:00 am - I am aboard the first train from Big Lake headed into the self-satisfied cesspool that is the heart of the Twin Cities. Everybody aboard my car seems happy to be making the trip, but most of them work for metro news organizations and as such are card-carrying contributors to the moral decay that Minneapolis represents. No "locals" are anywhere near - they fled this car as soon as the first "how does it feel" questions began to fly. How does anyone know how they really feel at 5 am? For me, it's despair. Here I am, 400 years in the business and I still draw the earliest assignment in the book. Doesn't seniority count for anything?
5:15 am - Zipping along at 70 miles per hour, we see the lights of cars on highway 10 and notice that traffic is moving just as fast as we are, if not a little faster! I want my money back! Northstar Commuter Rail will be a bust unless people on board the train get the satisfaction of watching a lot of dopes stuck in their automobiles, bumper-to-bumper, suffering miserably.
5:23 am - Coon Rapids already. A desperate TV reporter tried to interview me about all the media coverage on Northstar's first day. I pretended to be alseep. She interviewed me anyway and did not seem to notice.
5:26 am - Was swept along with a swarm of reporters flooding another car, looking for "ordinary" people to say something on about the meaning of this train ride. Everyone is pretending to read the paper. Odd, since the paper today is all about Northstar on those pages where it's not about the Vikings beating Detroit.5:28 am - Some travelers who haven't yet learned to hide behind a blank mask of commuter ennui got trapped into talking to the press and were cheerful enough, but I'm not buying their act. These are people on cold turkey withdrawal from their daily dose of invigorating road rage. Later today, at lunch perhaps, they'll erupt.
5:31 am - Fridley like I have never seen it.
5:42 am - Northstar goes a lot slower in the Twin Cities. Since when does Minneapolis have rail yards? A moment of excitement - one of the TV stations may have spotted a real hobo.
5:51 am - Target Field. Downtown Minneapolis. Everybody out. Monday morning and not quite 6 am yet. If I worked here, I'd be extremely morose right now. Wait, I AM working here. And I AM morose. I suppose I'd better talk to somebody.
6:04 am - Just finished interviewing a guy who got transferred here from Chicago. I asked him how Northstar compared to the trains he rode in The Windy City and he said the commute there has a lot less "golly" and "gee whiz" to it. Or maybe he said "Cheese Whiz". I did notice somebody having crackers for breakfast, even though eating onboard is forbidden.
6:08 am - Was just informed that the only morning train headed back to Big Lake (and my car) left at 6:05. Now I'm stuck in Minneapolis until 3:50 this afternoon. Golly gee.
Bud seems to be extra surly today. I have my doubts as to whether he was actually on a train this morning or just making things up in his basement.
Commuters in the largest cities tend to turn inward and avoid eye contact, but I have been on Twin Cities busses where strangers are downright chatty.
What sort of rail commuter would you be? An iPod listener? A newspaper hide-behinder? A window starer-outer? Or a social butterfly?
Comments (24)
Morning Heartlanders. Welcome back, Dale!
I've never commuted by the light rail (wrong part of town), but for many years I worked downtown and did daily MTC duty. I'm one of the lucky ones who can read on the bus w/o any ill affects. Now there is not public transportation to my job so I listen to books on CD while I drive!
Back to the veal fattening pen after a week of on again off again illness...
Nice blog entry, Dale. Reading Trial Balloon is always a nice way to start an otherwise dull day with a smile on my face.
For certain, I'd be the commuter with the mp3 player. I would keep a notebook and a camera with me at all times, too, to record observations. :-) No chatting for me.
Have a great Monday, all!
on my commute to the barn (about 50 yards) i try to make eye contact with whatever is out there. i'm not a chatter; just nod and smile. the Girls always start yelling at me about how hungry they are, so i'm out there, seemingy alone, saying "i'm coming; don't worry, you won't starve" to the amused red squirrles, skunks, coyotes and deer who, i'm sure, know this routine as well as the goats and i know it.
if i commuted, the train would be appealing. Joanne, do you think that you will ever use it??
I've been a rail commuter in Washington, DC and Chicago. This summer, I had the fun of taking the Hiawatha Line into Minneapolis to work the downtown Farmer's Market on Thursdays, so I can confirm that there is definitely less Cheese Whiz here than in Chicago. DC is theoretically also a no food zone, and people mostly abide by it, usually, well sometimes,
I'm a knitter on the train-can't read, but the knitting doesn't bother me. Almost makes me wish I still had a regular commute-almost.
I just wanted to say thanks so much for the tickets to the Cedar. It was a really fun show, I learned that John Gorka is from New Jersey and became an old blues singer at age 23 when he lived in the basement of a coffeehouse:) He played a song about wanting to be a tree when he grows up. Do we have that in the library?
Back to the blog after a long break, tech difficulties, busy-ness, some illness at fault. Missed everyone and also any explanation for Dale being heard during non-show hours. Presuming it's the vacation trick he first used some bit ago, recording ahead in the schedule. True?
Anyway, no real commute for me currently, but no chit-chat if I had one. Most likely reading and listening to RH on a Zune or something... maybe napping.
i would be there with a book a newspaper and headphones hooked to my iphone. i wuld be using none of it because i would be chartting with the guy next to me.
i hope the northstar blows them away like the one from the airport to downtown minneapolis did. i am a big lite rail fan. let michelle bachman sit in rush hour traffic.
When I was a regular bus rider, I was a nose-in-my-book rider. I'd probably add my iPod now, too. (When I was driving my daughter to preschool every day there were days I just wanted to listen to the radio at the end of a busy day, but was a "good" mom and talked with her instead...does it make be a "bad" mom that I appreciate now being able to listen to the radio on my drive to and from work all by my lonesome?...)
I'm sure Bud Buck made up that story. There is no way he made it out to Big Lake by 5 am to get on that train.
I've been on the comuter trains in New York and in Chicago. I don't think I noticed much talking. You could try to talk to people, but I don't think they would be very interested in rewarding your efforts. You might occaisionly see some one carrying on a conversation directed at some invisable person.
I haven't been on any of the Minnesota computer trains which I'm sure would be a little diferent from those in NY or Chicago. I bet there wouldn't be much talking here either, probably not even to invisable people. I think I would need to start making use of my iPod if I had to use a computer train.
Good Morning!
I am a huge fan of the light rail and have ridden the Hiawatha line too many times to count. For me the best thing about the train is the easy access with my bike. I have the option to take it for the middle part of my commute and in the winter months that will be a welcome respite from the weather. It also looks like the new addition to the Hiawatha line will make for a better connection to the Cedar Lake Trail, also known as 'The Bike Highway' so cyclists will have less downtown traffic to contend with. It's all good!
As for Bud, I think we have photographic evidence that he is lying since it would still have been dark when the photo was taken if it had been in relation to his ride.
The hardest part of a conversion to mass transit may be the prohibition against eating and drinking, which can get very rigidly enforced, as on BART or the D.C. Metro, a la Dougie "the subway fugitive" Behrman who produces Click and Clack. We have become a nation enslaved to drinks derived from South American plants.
I commuted by subway for about a year in Boston 30 years ago. Too hot some of the time, too cold the rest, and too crowded all the time. No conversation, ever. Reading was difficult when you're jammed into the train like cordwood. The Roches sum it up perfectly.
But it did beat Boston traffic. There are many days I wish I had a good mass transit alternative.
My dad commuted on the Long Island Railroad for 30+ years, an hour each way on a good day for a trip that was maybe 20 miles as the crow flies. If it weren't for the fact that he lived to 90, I'd say it took years off his life.
I love light rail also, and alas was commuting in San Francisco pre-BART. But the busses and streetcars were fine after I figured out how to use them (there are many ways to get to the wrong place). I was usually a reader, but one chatty day (sometimes you just find the "right" person) I ended up taking home a box with a kitten in it.
Love the kitten story, Barb.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
I love hearing the stories from people who were actually rail commuters in other cities. Presumably we'll get the hang of it in the Twin Cities once we've had some practice.
Kim in St. Paul - Congratulations for noticing that I appear to be doing the show during non-show hours. With the juggling of our program schedule, Mike, JASPER and I are trying a different approach. Basically, the "live" show happens between 7 and 9 am. That's when I'm actually in the studio spinning discs, and those hours are repeated from 11 to 1. Between 6 and 7 and 9 and 11, I record my comments and drop them into JASPER's digital bucket, and he plays them back at the appropriate time. The impression is created that I'm still in the studio, when in fact I'm off doing interviews and planning for the next day. Oddly, when you hear me give the time that's a clue that I'm not actually there, since I can't give time checks during the "live" hours (since they are repeated later in the day).
Whew! Too much information! But thanks for asking.
I would be looking out the window daydreaming about striking up a conversation with the good-looking single guy sitting next to me, named Carlos. I'd smile and he'd smile back. I'd remark about how pleasant-smelling the train is at its infancy stage. He'd nod and agree and then I'd work up the courage to tell him some amusing anecdotes about my English ancestors who landed in Kentucky and made moonshine for a spell. And then I'd tell him about my great grandfather's antics at the picture show one Saturday with my dad's cousin. And then I'd motion toward the window and say, "See that hobo? I'm pretty sure that's one of my decendents from Kentucky."
Carlos would crack up at that and say, "What's a cute funny girl like you doing in South Dakota?"
And I'd say, "I know - isnt that ironic?"
Then he'd ask me out, we'd fall in love and soon thereafter I'd become a Minnesotan.
40 years ago I used to ride the IC into downtown Chigao but always with college friends, which made it a fun thing to do. I am sure we looked odd to the real Chi residents.
Dale--thanks for the explanation. I was wondering what was live and what was fake live (we need a word for such production). Techology is interesting. My son produces computer games and says two things about current technology: 1) from here on, believe nothing you see or hear. 2) because we can do anything that does not mean we should do everything.
Clyde -- love your son's take. I'll have to print this out and frame it for my teenager, who needs to know both!
wow, donna, awesome vision of riding the rails--i am SO on board with it! ;-)
ha ha, "believe nothing you see and hear from now on"---i'm pretty sure i can do that....except i'll probably believe whatever Carlos tells me, alas.
no current commute, but did a lot of bus riding in Mpls during the eighties...and gained quite an education thereby. back then, without iPods etc., one either read, window gazed, or chatted--and i had quite a few bus-stop friends....it was nice, civilized, neighborly....
Will try and catch all the train songs that were played early this a.m. Dale -- I'd like to request for tomorrow the MTA by the Kingston Trio if you have it. :)
I was also lol at Donna's rendition, and Barb's commute to the barn... good morning for laughs.
Catherine, what do you mean by "worked" the Farmers Market on Thursday?
Hi Barbara,
I mean that I worked at a stand at the Farmer's Market. About the only way I think I could see myself working in downtown Minneapolis. Not the office type anymore.
Sorry if my grammar was unclear.
Catherine
Greetings! What a great subject ... and I'm the only one who can definitely say I was there! I'm late because of computer difficulties ...
On Saturday, there was a big party and ceremony at the Big Lake train station that I attended. HUGE crowd of people, tons of security, vendors, food, speakers and the beautiful new trains. It was exciting and it was a BIG DEAL! I gathered some goodies with my younger son, ate a bunch of food, listened to speakers until that whack job, Michele Bachman came to the podium.
Then we went outside, looked around and picked up 2 free tickets to ride the train on Sat. 11/21. Unfortunately, I have to work that day, so I'm hoping my husband can take the boys on a train ride.
I wasn't able to get on the train that day to see inside, but they look swanky. I've seen them doing practice runs in and out of Big Lake the last few weeks.
When I used to live closer in and had a real job in downtown Mpls, I always took the bus. Reading, listening to radio or sometimes putting on make-up. Occasionally converse with fellow bus rider. I can't wait to try out the new train, although the fare isn't cheap.
Thanks for that description, Joanne. Would have loved to be there...
Catherine - I have a lot of interest currently in Farmers Markets of all kinds; if you're still next summer I'll try and find you. :)
pleasant and fun reading today - thanks to you all.
Donna, what a very rich fantasy life you live. i would like to know your brain (and borrow it for awhile also) ha, ha!!
and Joanne, we want to really know how you feel about MB - don't be so reticent! :-)
in case i miss anyone tomorrow - there is a big opportunity to GIVE TO THE MAX tomorrow, tuesday, Nov. 17. just go to the website and your donations to nonprofits will be doubled tomorrow (tuesday) only. it's totally on the up and up and 100% of what you give goes to the nonprofits. you can search for non-profits, and i saw this afternoon that MPR is on the list. there are many, many others also. so make your money count twice!
- Become a Member
- Member Connect Accounts
- Leadership Circle
- Sustaining Members
- Member Discounts
- Become a Sponsor
- Tax Information
- Planned Giving
- Vehicle Donation
- Donate Stock
