Snow is floating earthward in fat, wet flakes as Train 172 rumbles under the Barry Bridge in Chester, Pa. Harrah’s Casino gleams on one side of the tracks; a state prison glowers on the other. Ironically, gambling and incarceration are the two biggest industries in this downtrodden rust-belt city—by many measures, Pennsylvania’s poorest.
I’m on my way to JFK to catch a plane to Asia, but right now I’m wondering about train tracks—how they both bring people together and divide them. “The other side of the tracks,” a common idiom, is about the divide.
The snow covers up a lot of the ugliness along the Amtrak line—the abandoned businesses, warehouses full of frigid cold air, crumbling walls, rusting cars. But a blanket of white cannot hide the prison or the casino. Rows of houses huddle along the rails, their dirty windows glimpsing us as we hurry by in our cozy Quiet Car. A rich man rarely builds his home along the Northeast Corridor main line, and in some ways these tracks that speed us to our destinations in comfort—with free WiFi and a glass of merlot—are like prison walls, barriers that are dangerous and even impossible to cross.
As I head to Thailand for a few days of sightseeing, then on to Cambodia to build houses for the Tabitha Foundation, I must pay attention to the tracks. “Stop, look, and listen,” the crossing signs once said. Be still, be mindful, with eyes wide open. Listen to the other voices. Find the words. Write.
Here I go again.
