Desecrating the Zen of the 'Quiet Car'

Silence may be golden, but not at the hectoring of the Angry Train Librarian

Occasionally, for work, I take the train from Harrisburg, PA to Philadelphia -- about a two hour trip -- when I don't feel like braving the soul-destroying traffic and ubiquitous pinheads on the Schuylkill ("Surekill") Expressway. My train trips are very infrequent; civil defense lawyers shun Philly like Mordor. Accordingly, totally aside from my congenital obliviousness to most things not having to do with knowing exactly where state police like to hide with their radar guns, I'm unfamiliar with the latest innovations specially designed to annoy me, I mean enhance the overall Amtrak ambience.

Thus, one fine morning I had reason to book a 6:30 a.m. ticket and hopped aboard. I should note at the outset that from what I have observed during my episodic train adventures, the level of security at the Harrisburg Amtrak station rivals that found at, say, an Olive Garden, or maybe a woefully understaffed Pacifist Renaissance Fair. No metal detectors, no bag scan, no security wands, nothing. Not even a bilingual "Gun Free Zone!" sign. I think I once spotted sniffing security dogs, but they were miniature Yorkies wearing knitted holiday sweater vests. One could gear up like Yosemite Sam, carrying a scoped varmint gun and pirate sword while wearing crossed bandoliers of ammo and holding a fizzing bomb with "TNT" inscribed on the side and encounter little to no resistance. I mention this laxity only by way of contrast with the indignities later visited upon me.

I plopped down with my briefcase at the very end of the train car because in that section the seats face each other, providing a smidge more legroom. There were very few people on board, at most twenty, all scattered about the cabin. After a few minutes, a woman sat down across from me. She smiled and said "Good morning." In response, I demanded to know if she liked mayonnaise. No, I kid. My medications are helping me resist that urge. I reciprocated her greeting. She was in standard business attire and soon began typing away on her laptop. Another routine morning commute on the Mayor Pete Anti-Racist Express was about to commence.

Maybe fifteen minutes into our journey, after I grew fatigued from re-reading my brief, I engaged my co-passenger in small talk. What did she do for work? Where was she heading? How often does she take the train? A perfectly pleasant conversation, conducted at a very normal volume. Thus, I was both startled and bemused when an elderly woman, seated facing me about ten feet away on the other side of the aisle, put a bony finger to her lips and loudly shushed me. I almost laughed out loud. A strange, crabby woman was chiding me for talking on the train. I instinctively looked behind me to see if her ire was directed elsewhere but, of course, there was only the bulkhead. No, I was definitely the offending party. The Angry Train Librarian wanted me to be silent.

I said to the woman across from me: "There's a weird lady over there who is shushing me. What is her deal?"

My companion laughed and said she had no idea.

So, I ignored bizarro Angela Lansbury -- still gazing at me, pinch-faced, with smoldering opprobrium -- and continued on with our conversation.

I don't know how much time elapsed, maybe five or ten more minutes, before there was a tall man looming over me. Picture Sir Topham Hatt as played by Jeremy Irons. The man was clearly an official train personage -- conductor, engineer, bagman for the Angry Librarian -- and he was displeased with me. He said:

"Sir, we've had a complaint. (One wonders from whom.) You are disturbing other passengers. This is the Quiet Car. There is no talking on the Quiet Car."

It was at this point that I noticed my acquaintance and co-conspirator with whom I had been chatting would no longer make eye contact with me. I had become persona non grata.

Still trying to wrap my mind around the Ben Stiller movie in which I now found myself and this Daddy Day Care concept of a Quiet Car, I responded:

"I've never heard of a Quiet Car. Does it say that somewhere?"

The roving QC Enforcement Officer, with an exasperated yet triumphant look, pointed down the center aisle like the Ghost of Christmas Future showing Scrooge his tombstone. I shifted in my seat so I could look and what should my wondering eyes behold, approximately 500 yards away, but a teeny tiny sign, hanging from the ceiling of the Quiet Car. From my vantage point, it could have been written in Egyptian hieroglyphics that, if translated, said: "Curb your dog." Or "Pizza, Pizza." Or: "This train stops at George Floyd remembrance crossings." Whatever.

I looked up at perturbed Sir Topham Hatt: "I have no idea what that says. I didn't enter the car way down there. Are you really telling me that talking is forbidden?"

(Aside: while later recounting my harrowing tale of unfair persecution to my yugely unsympathetic wife, it was at this point that she interjected: "Why do you always have to cause problems? Why can't you just follow the rules? You just like to argue with people!" I told her that her objections were obstreperous and overruled. And that's why I had to sleep on the Quiet Couch with only the crusted dog drool pillow to rest my weary head.)

At my query, the train warden strode away down the aisle. I wondered if he was going to get the cattle prods and manacles used on recalcitrant passengers. I began to picture the dank, Quiet Car jail cell that I'd have to share with the Sisters. He returned, flourishing a piece of paper. He snapped it at me, as if to say: "Read, Infidel!" On it were inscribed the Quiet Car Mosaic Laws. I don't remember them all, there were many categories of serious violations, but if I recall they included no loud music, no dramatic skits, no chewing with one's mouth open, no watching action movies on one's tablet, no kazoos, no clog dancing unless for social justice, no jackhammering, no megaphones, no clapping, no eating peanut brittle, no aggressive yawning and no human interaction unless to share sustainable dessert hummus recipes using sign language.

(Aside, part deux: the ambient noise level on an Amtrak train -- the omnipresent clacking, screeching, groaning of 10,000 tons rolling down metal tracks -- is about the same as one might experience riding in a wooden stage coach on the Oregon Trail accompanied by one's constipated parrot with Tourette's while being attacked by a Comanche war party. It's not a Rolls Royce Phantom. Just sayin'.)

The entire time I was perusing these very important commandments, the Angry Librarian, whose bubble of serenity I had wantonly despoiled like a whooping imperialist sacking an indigenous mud hut village, was staring at me with venomous revulsion, as if observing the protestations of a serial killer.

I pondered the rules and then, because I can't help it, said: "It says no loud talking. I wasn't talking loudly."

At this, Sir Topham Hat let slip the Dobermans of war. No, he said in a most ominous tone, Darth Vader with a British accent: "I find your lack of faith in the Quiet Car disturbing, chappie." Ok, what he actually said was: "Sir, are you going to be a problem? If so, I'm going to have to ask you to move to the steerage car, where there is a unisex latrine and mouthbreathing Huns and Visigoths of your ilk are permitted to make cacophonous, bestial yowling noises, set off M80's, play snare drums, blow air horns and engage in all manner of ear-splitting hooliganism because that is their nature."

Although my instinct was to leap from my seat, karate chop him in the neck and yell into the Angry Librarian's ear trumpet: "How you like them apples, Cruella!" -- alas, I did not. Chuck Norris weeps.

Instead, much to my shame, I said I would not be a problem and went back to reading my brief, while muttering under my breath and vowing to come on board next time with an Oompah band and maybe an unleashed, hangry feral hog.

The lesson class, as always: become a member of Congress and get your own plane.