Christmas time in Chicago always had that neat feel about it. Trees twinkling with festivity, shop windows pitching their solution to your Christmas needs, and commuters sharing a bottle of cheer on their train ride home.
One such night I was working a passenger train from Chicago to Waukegan. On a typical job the crew would make 2-3 round trips during the course of a shift. This run was the last of the day, with our final stop in Waukegan. I was working the last three cars. Each car held about two hundred passengers. Clybourn was where we started our “sweep,” where we went from car to car punching tickets, collecting cash fares, and nodding to those with monthly passes.
Somewhere around Evanston this guy gets up, bible in hand, and walks up and down the aisles telling everyone they are all going to hell and that they had better repent. I tried to make light of the situation, responding that actually some are going to Winnetka, which is pretty nice, but I might concede on Great Lakes. Sailors called that the armpit of the nation.
The passengers, however, were not amused. They were tired. Theirs was a long day, waking and boarding an early train in, and a late one home.
I tried reasoning with the guy, telling him to quit, that these folks needed a rest. He would not have any of that. Then I made a bargain. If he promised to quit harassing my passengers, I would attend his church that evening. Somehow it came out in the conversation that they were having a service that night in Waukegan. He agreed with the deal. The rest of the ride home was quiet. I let the remaining passengers out at Waukegan and threw a few switches to put the train away.
The church was only a few blocks away. It was the Pentecostal brand. I would go in, but in no way was I going to dip my hand in a bucket full of snakes. It was a small church, probably repurposed from a more successful one that had grown too big.
I saw the guy there and nodded in his direction. He faded into the crowd. I’ll bet it wasn’t five minutes into the service they all started speaking in tongues, the whole bunch of them. That was just a little too weird for me. I split.
I picked up a six pack of beer and a couple of tacos for the one hour fifteen-minute trip home. The Pentecostal guy did not show up on the train the rest of the week. After that, my assignment changed to another route. A different conductor probably would have thrown the guy off the train, but, you know, back in the time of Christ, they thought John the Baptist was a kook too.
Leave a Reply