I've Got the Beetz

In her poem, The Moose, Elizabeth Bishop captures the experience of travel beautifully. She colors the piece with fragments of conversations, the grandparents discussing "what he said, what she said", and the changing landscapes through the sensory observations of a passenger. Details range from "the smell of salt hay" to the "rows of sugar maples" and "clapboard farmhouses" (169). What I find most interesting is that not only can the sights and sounds change, but a bus or train has the potential to open its doors to a place vastly different from one stop to the next. Not just visibly or geographically, but culturally.

Over fall break a few weeks ago, I took a few trains to visit my mother in Pennsylvania. What should have been 3 trains turned into four, however, when I accidentally took an Express train that skipped the Haverford stop that I was intending to get off at. I realized I couldn’t do anything about it, so I got off at the final stop and would surrendered to taking a train back in the direction I had come from. At this point I was feeling pretty dumb. Suddenly, buckets of rain began to fall from the sky just as I was getting off the train to walk over to the other track.

The train I was now going to take back was scheduled to arrive at 7:04, so when one pulled in at 7:05, I started to make my way to the closest car. I was stopped however by an Amtrak worker whom I had spoken with earlier, telling me that this wasn’t the train I wanted in order to get back to Haverford. (I had asked him if I could buy a ticket on the train because, obviously, the ticket window was closed). And then there was a moose on the track! Just kidding, there wasn’t. But I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised.  

I waited about ten more minutes until another train came along. This time, I confirmed with the woman next to me that this was not in fact the Polar Express and that I was getting on the right train. She assured me that it was, so I got on the train and took a seat. Soon the ticket collector came to my aisle. I told him that my destination was Haverford; he asked me for the $4.00 fare. I found $3.05 in my pocket and proceeded to rummage through my pockets/bags looking for the rest, thinking I must have one more measly dollar floating around somewhere. I couldn’t find it. What I did have, were beets. I had taken a few of the squishier ones from the Mountain House so that they wouldn’t go to waste, and in this moment I had more root vegetables on me than cash. Excuse me, kind sir, I do not have the remaining 95 cents, but would you like a nice, soft beet? No Amelia, you are no longer in the Adirondacks, you can’t just barter vegetables for train fare. Luckily, it didn’t come to that; the man took pity on me and left me and my bag of beets.

It struck me how in just a few train rides I had gone from a place where it would not have been strange to be not only carrying vegetables, but substituting them for currency, to a place where I was simply a confused, inept, waterlogged member of society. I wonder how greatly the stops in Bishop’s poem differed. Would the passenger with the two market bags going to Boston have had anything to say to the woman shaking her tablecloth seen outside the window? Would they have bartered their items?

photo: http://theverybesttop10.com/angry-wet-cats/