Of Not-tards, broken seats and bourbon

My first long train ride (DC to Chicago) seemed mildly cursed from the start. We were delayed in boarding by about an hour or a bit more, and when we finally did get on the train, some weirdness started. Passengers going a long way on the train (probably Pittsburgh or beyond) were given little slips of paper with seat assignment numbers on them. I followed a family of three up to the door and was given seat 21. I headed upstairs and found the seat, but a man with a strangely small guitar case next to him was already sitting there.

“Um, sorry sir, but I think you might be in my seat,” I said, holding up the flow of people behind me. “Unless we got the same number by accident or something.” It’s a weakness of mine: I always try and give people outs.

The man stared up at me, maybe mumbled something, but then just looked out the window.

“Sir? Did you get a seat assignment?” I asked.

“A what?” I should stress that this man was not visibly retarded. Just throwing that out there.

“A seat assignment,” I said again, holding up my yellow slip of paper with “21” written on it. “Did you get one?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” he said, and turned back to the window. At this point about three people in the aisle behind me tried to chime in and tell him what a seat assignment is. Again, and I can’t stress this enough – he was not retarded.

“Um…” I was at a loss. “Maybe you should go ask the guy outside about your seat assignment?” He ignored this suggestion, from me and the woman behind me, literally three separate times. Finally he turned back and said, “I’ll just wait for the guy to come up here and he can tell us what to do.” He was polite the entire time, but repeated that plan of action maybe three times. Eventually the woman behind me went back down the stairs and got the conductor, who came back up and asked the guy for a seat assignment.

“What?” asked Mr. Mini-Guitar Player.

“Did you get assigned a seat?”

“A guy out there just told me to come up here and sit down, that’s all I know,” he said. The conductor then asked where he was headed, to which the guy pulled out a ticket and tried to show it to him. “Just tell me where you’re going, that’s all,” said the conductor.

A long pause. “Oh. Cumberland?”

At which point it was determined that the man was in the wrong car and needed to move, which he did. See what happened there? See how this long, drawn-out story has a meaningless and humorless punchline? Fun, right? Yeah. Then, the recline button on my seat didn’t work. Maybe the mini-guitar broke it.

On the bright side of things for this leg of the trip, I brought a small bottle of Jack Daniels purchased at the station in DC with me, and enjoyed some nice Jack and Cokes in lounge car (or something) listening to two rednecks discuss football and military service. The bright side had a downside though: I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alcoholic as when an Amtrak conductor told me I can’t bring liquor on to a train, and that I needed to “hide that shit.”

Honestly, I’m a little confused about this policy: they sell beer and wine on the train, and passengers are more than welcome to bring other food and drink items with them. Why not booze?

This has been a long and rambling post, but here are my lessons from the first long leg of a very long trip: if you insist on taking your assigned seat from a weirdo, the seat will probably be broken; and if you bring booze on a train, don’t offer some to the conductor. He doesn’t want any.