The North East Limited
A young friend of mine attends a prestigious New England School, one of the old Seven Sisters, and I have been meaning to pay a visit. The realization struck me a few weeks ago that this year was flying fast, and given the accelerating nature of the years, it was entirely possible that the most convenient time might wind up being some pleasant Fall day long after she was graduated and gone.
All things being equal, driving would have made more sense- still cheaper, though if you include the wear-and-tear and risk of mischance on I-95 in the cities of Baltimore, Philly, Wilmington, Newark, New York, New Haven and Hartford, it seemed that it would be smarter and more relaxing to take the train and let someone else do the driving.
The train is a lot like flying used to be. You carry your bags, or not, and get in a line and then walk out and get in the car. There are no glowering guards, no strip search and no security exclusion zone.
Of course it makes the system more vulnerable, but AMTRAK is it’s own sort of animal, and with a shrug, we all get on with it.
The trip up was long but pleasant. I read half a book on the way, yacked on the phone when I felt like it, and scanned my office e-mail on the Blackberry as if I was in the office. I could have been working on the internet, as well, had I kept the wireless card from one of the other jobs, but I don’t travel enough any more to make it cost-efficient.
Popping off at Springfield, Massachusetts, I felt relaxed and remarkably upbeat in the late fall sunlight. It is a contrast from the way I feel when I escape from an overcrowded airplane. The closest place I could find to stay was right there is town, about twenty miles away from the college, but that worked out all right. The rental car people picked me up at the station, and within an hour I was checked into a decent room
Friday after arriving, I weaved up the interstate to South Hadley, found the correct State Route, and arrived without incident at the campus. I was treated to a tour of campus and a look at her dormitory room before having an excellent meal at the new restaurant in The Commons across the street from campus.
The architecture of the place is quirky and wonderful- the new buildings compliment the old, and there is a tranquil harmony that is absent from places like my Big Ten education factory in Ann Arbor, or more starkly a place like MSU in East Lansing where my younger boy went.
I managed to find Springfield again that night, and for Saturday, we started with an excellent adventure in new technology.
The roads in this part of the state follow the farm routes of a more bucolic time, and wander where they will. We got lost attempting re-find a magnificent little place we had stumbled on years ago, As we drove though historic village after historic village, all pumpkin and goblin-themed in anticipation of Halloween, I realized I was hopelessly lost.
It was entirely possible, I mused, that the The Miss Florence Diner had a lot in common with the village of Brig’o’doon, and perhaps only appeared when you were really hungry.
I discovered that my telephone has another magic property. A very stern-voiced woman speaks to me from it, and if the correct address is entered, will direct you in aloof tones direct to the parking space in front of the door.
Miss Florence is a wonderful classic of the type- large portions of good food--we ordered eggs benedict for me, eggs Florentine for her- and had a terrific dining experience. We decided that the woman in the phone had to go, and I was informed that I could download a more approachable and quite female voice (“oh, turn here…faster…faster!) though on the whole, we decided to download the voice of Mounty Python alumni John Cleese as the more appropriate choice.
Then back to past the farms and ancient homes to tour the equestrian center and talk to a couple horses. There was a show of some sort in progress, students looking grim with purpose in dark blazers and close-fitting breeches, then off to hippy Northhampton. Along the way knots of demonstrators stood clustered at road junctions with blue Obama signs, and in the cities the galleries and tattoo parlors were unanimous in their support for change. It is what I would expect from the eclectic folks who reside around the bastion of Smith College.
Heading back, we stopped at the remarkable organic collective that is the Atkins Farm market. It seemed a shame to miss an institution devoted to eating locally, and we wandered with the earnest-looking shoppers and sampled the local vegetables and cheeses.
We took a break with a tour of the the gem of a museum on campus and the special ancient Bronze exhibit. I saw it was traveling from the Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian back home in DC, but I never would have seen it there.
Then up Route 116 to Amherst for a early pizza dinner, with a tour of quirky little Hampshire College on the way. My brother attended Amherst for a couple years, and my sister went to Hampshire when it was brand new. I had visited them both in the old days, so it was pretty interesting. It was Game Day at Amherst, with a couple thousand people in attendance, an entirely human-scale event that would be a rounding error on the crowd of more than 100,000 at the Big House that afternoon.
The shy was gray and sputtered sprinkles of moisture most of the day but we did not get wet, and the colors of the trees and foliage was muted and quite affecting. The little houses and farms- the local industry is education, after all, are well kept. The old places are all aggregations of "new" additions, some hundreds of years old, added when the family was doing well and needed more room.
Add in the rolling terrain and broad rivers and streams, and it was quite a day.
We bade a fond farewell and I was nearly back to Springfield in the dark when I got a call that asked me politely to look on the seat next to me. Yep, there was a mobile phone was there, so I doubled back through Springfield's slum (yes, they have a pretty good one) and across the river and around the Rotary and back to Campus to deliver it.
It was full dark when I completed the round trip, and a wild storm was rising. It battered and blew against the side of the Hilton Garden, and made the comforter that much more inviting as my eyes closed.
It was crisp and clear the next morning for the train back, which was completely uneventful, except for the small matter of misplacing the train station- I don't know yet if the arrangement for dropping the rental car at a parking lot nearby worked out or not yet. But the North East Limited ran precisely as advertised, rolling across hill and dale and through the great eastern cities.
I am home safe, nursing a small cold, and not at all ready for the week.
I do know one thing, though, and that there is a place where the trees are bright with color, and the tempo of life is a little more relaxed than Washington. Walking through the high vaulted ceiling of the reading room at my friend’s school, I realize I would really like to take a long break, dump the Blackberry out the window, spread my junk out at a table, and learn something that is actually interesting.
It is nice to know that such places still exist.
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com