Off the Rails

by Beppe Severgnini

  I shut the door to my sleeperette, I clamber up to the second story, I read Don DeLillo’s Americana on my iPad, and I find it consoling: it’s nice to know that we’re not the only lunatics with an unrestrainable desire to cross the USA. I fall asleep around midnight, in a position befitting a fakir. At 3:40 a.m. I’m awakened by two sharp raps on the door. I shut my bag, drag the suitcase, get out of the train, and join the others on the platform in the Cleveland station.

  The night is warm; the sky is clear; the white letters spelling out CLEVELAND BROWNS STADIUM glitter behind the chain-link fence. Three skyscrapers rear up over the silver train as it leaves without us, on its way to Chicago.

  Everything looks peaceful and perfect, somehow. But we cannot afford to stay romantic for too long. We need to find a taxi, pronto. At four in the morning, no one walks the streets of downtown Cleveland.

  Cleveland Rocks!

  Cleveland is an interesting city. It doesn’t enjoy the best reputation in the rest of the United States. One nickname that’s stuck is “the Mistake on the Lake,” a moniker that opens itself up to various interpretations: it’s either a reference to the city’s Municipal Stadium—well-known for being chilly, dreary, and uninviting—or else a sarcastic holdover from the time that the Cuyahoga River actually caught fire, back in 1969, because of the elevated pollution levels at the river’s mouth, where it flowed into Lake Erie. It could allude to the city’s default on its federal loans in 1978, or be a grim tip of the hat to the spikes in unemployment that plagued Cleveland in the 1980s, when manufacturing in the Midwest, which had long lured immigrants from around the world, first began to collapse.

  In any case, things have changed. Cleveland made no further mistakes, and recovery finally came to the city. Heavy manufacturing was replaced by health care, now the city’s biggest industry, and to a certain extent that anesthetized the pain, as has been the case elsewhere (in Houston, for instance). Cleveland has been spruced up and now looks clean, full of parks, green spaces, bike paths, and pedestrian malls; in 2005 The Economist named Cleveland “one of the most livable cities in America.” I have to agree: it’s a sort of miniature Chicago, just a little more modest and working-class. “I think I could live here,” I tell my traveling companions, who all look at me as if I’ve lost my mind.

  In the warmth of a bright, almost summery sun, we get busy trying to deepen our understanding of the local culture. We discuss politics with those willing to listen (not many), especially in the Tremont neighborhood, full of bright, cheery murals and young people of all colors, long since abandoned by its original immigrants—the Ukrainians, Poles, Hungarians, and Slovaks who came here a century ago to work in the steel mills—now replaced by restaurateurs, baristas, and artists. They seem to be convinced that the Democrats will succeed in taking Ohio, a fundamental electoral prize: whoever wins Ohio usually wins the election. This is America, I philosophize: always changing, none of that European romanticism about places. They’re no better or worse than us, only different.

  It’s a long day as we wait for the train to Illinois. We search for relics of LeBron James, the basketball champion, born not far away, in Akron, in 1984. We explore the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, along with crowds of schoolkids on field trips to the museum of America’s own classical music: Elvis, Springsteen, Nirvana (in fact, the term “rock ’n’ roll” was used here for the very first time, back in 1951, by the DJ Alan Freed). We have lunch with the Donauschwaben, the Danube Swabians, Germans who were expelled from Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia in the aftermath of the Second World War. They seem to have popped out of a time warp: sandals with socks, vegetables eaten almost raw, stern matrons with sculptural permanents. We even find the time to study up on the real estate market: we discover that 250,000 dollars is all you need to buy a nice house with a big yard overlooking the lake. “Why don’t you come back here in winter before making up your minds!” snickers the Realtor who takes us around, skeptical as to our actual intentions to buy.

  From Cleveland to Chicago

  Some vicious detractors claim that there were other possible trains from Cleveland to Chicago. “It’s not true,” Soledad, our producer, assures us. “There was only this one, departing at three forty-five a.m. It’s not my fault that it’s leaving an hour late.”

  Here we are, under the fluorescent lights of an unlikely early Saturday morning with a map on our knees, a yawn in our throats, and regret in our eyes. We could have slept another hour, before the wake-up call rang us awake with a cheery “Good morning!” “It could have gone worse,” Edward says briskly. “It could have snowed.” Edward is an Amtrak representative, lives in Florida, and has a robust dislike for snow.

  What does it matter? After all, we’re here now. We’ll wait for the silvery train that runs around the edge of Lake Erie to Toledo, Ohio, and then across Indiana, arriving seven hours later in Chicago, Illinois.

  Now that I think about it, “run” may not be the exact word I want.

  The average speed on long-distance Amtrak trains is seventy-one miles per hour, a joke by European standards. But we don’t complain, about the speed of the trains or anything else, and this docile pliability surprises the Americans we meet. The railway, for long trips, is considered an unusual, even eccentric means of transportation. A train isn’t patriotic like a car or indispensable like a plane. The idea that someone would choose it to cross America is viewed as strange, almost suspicious.

  The sleeperette, upon our second acquaintance, almost seems cozy. I manage to unhook the upper bunk without decapitating myself, for example. And from there, stretched out, I watch the United States go rolling past, like a documentary without voice-over. The cars on the divided roadways move slowly, like in a movie. Boundless fields, farmhouses, brightly lit signs: it all feels like I’ve seen it before. No one ever goes to America: you can only return.

  The state of Ohio gave birth to General Custer, several presidents, LeBron James, George Clooney, and Clark Gable, a wind turbine salesman heading for Illinois informs me. At breakfast I share the table with Don and Dottie—he’s seventy-five; she’s sixty-five—who are celebrating their forty-first wedding anniversary. They’re returning from Niagara Falls to their home in Austin, Texas, by way of Chicago. They say that the reason people are so hostile to Obama is that he’s black, just like them. They’ll probably vote for him. But they’re still going to have to think it over, because they didn’t like some of the things that the president said. I take a wild guess: his support for gay rights? Dottie narrows her eyes and bites her lip: I guessed it.

  Strange moods are crisscrossing the United States. After thirty-five years spent studying the place, and a few days aboard a train, I know how to recognize the grimaces on the face of a friendly nation. Most American citizens have moved so often, switched so many jobs, seen so many things change, that they’ve lost their orientation and their place in America, thinks Salvatore Scibona, a writer from Cleveland and the author of The End. A summary that I subscribe to, even though I wish I didn’t. Or maybe it’s the sleeperette effect: it makes you literary.

  Chicago, Illinois

  Chicago is the most interesting city in the United States; if you want me to change my mind, you’d have to talk me into spending a winter here. But the wind in the Windy City, in June, is warm and gentle, like the mood of all the people you meet.

  We’ve come to Cellular Field, the ballpark of the White Sox, who are playing Houston today. The sound of bat on ball marks the beginning of nice weather, a potent evocation of summer to which Americans respond with a Pavlovian reflex. Baseball is practically incomprehensible to us foreigners. Still, there is a solution: give up trying to understand it. You don’t have to. Baseball is something you inhale, like the warm June air. When a ball is hit out of the park, it has an aesthetic quality and a dynamic immediacy. And if everyone around you is yelling, then you yell, too: there must be a good reason.

  Baseball involves a pa
ssion for numbers, statistics, rituals, heroes that pop out of nowhere, choreographies, strategies, force, and the control of force. Baseball—162 games a year versus the 16 of football—is the American touchstone, a tireless producer of family memories. The sheer number of children present at Cellular Field proves that all this will continue. It’s no accident that so many writers and so many actors have taken on the challenge of this theme: from Don DeLillo’s Underworld to Moneyball with Brad Pitt.

  Barack Obama has spent time in this stadium. In the eighties, when he first arrived in Chicago to work as a community organizer, he moved to a house not far from here. We ride bikes over to see the street, the barbershop, the restaurant, and the cafeteria he frequented. In Italy no one would dream of visiting the family home of a former president or prime minister (Silvio Berlusconi’s, being so colorful, might be an exception). But in the U.S., there are political pilgrimages, which have nothing to do with your party affiliation. A president is a historic personage; you go to see where he came from in order to understand him. Which is an illusion, but it’s fun to foster illusions while pedaling around Hyde Park.

  From Chicago to Milwaukee, Wisconsin

  We’re traveling on Canadian tracks toward Wisconsin, which isn’t in Canada. An oddity that can be explained only by the free markets of railroads. Amtrak is the owner of some stretches of track (the most important is the line from Boston to Washington, DC). It rents all the other tracks from their owners. The tracks that are taking us from Chicago to Milwaukee today, for example, are the property of the Canadian National Railway.

  We have other disappointments. “Two of you can ride in the locomotive!” they had promised us. I’d immediately volunteered, along with the cameraman Alberto “Peace” Engeli, who owed his new nickname to the fact that, while wandering around the South Side of Chicago (80 murders and 260 gun-related injuries in the last sixteen months), he aimed his video camera at worrisome-looking individuals while shouting “Peace!” The interesting thing is that those guys, instead of coming after us, just returned the greeting.

  We return to the train. When the time comes to climb into the engine, we discover that in the cockpit there is room for only one guest; of course I make way for the video camera. A pity. Every man, when he was a teenager, dreamed of driving a train, Freud explained, attributing a sexual significance to this desire. I return to the car a little frustrated (of course! Freud would have said). I sit down and listen to the railway lesson offered by a loquacious Amtrak employee who’s traveling with us.

  I learn the following about American trains:

  Passenger traffic has collapsed since the 1950s, as a result of the development of the Interstate Highway System and the growth of commercial aviation. And it’s never recovered.

  The American railroads focus on freight. That’s why, on many lines, freight trains take precedence.

  A freight train is on average 1.2 miles long.

  Our train is pulled by the engine to Milwaukee; then it will be pushed backward back to Chicago. That’s why it’s called a “push-pull train.”

  The lesson doesn’t last long, and neither does the trip. At noon I see Milwaukee again for the first time in twenty years, when it was a blue-collar city that was changing its skin. Today it looks cleaned up, with a festive green lakefront. The railway station is white and graceful; the urban renewal is impeccable; there’s even a museum designed by the architect Santiago Calatrava, which folds its wings—literally—at five in the afternoon. Our immigrant compatriots have built the Italian Community Center and are preparing for their annual festival. Mario Calini, the only one who speaks Italian, welcomes us. He becomes emotional when we arrive; he becomes emotional when we leave; he worries when we ask those present whether the Italians of Milwaukee are more Democratic or Republican (the latter, if I understood correctly).

  In Milwaukee, the whites (chiefly of German and Polish origin) constitute forty percent of the population, and live separately; there are an equal number of blacks and they live to the north of the city; the Hispanics (seventeen percent) live in the south; the Asians, especially those of the Hmong ethnic group, live to the northwest. Milwaukee is a simple city and a city of symbols: Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Miller beer, the TV series Happy Days (there’s even a statue of Fonzie, bronze jacket and both thumbs up). A no-frills America, and I’m not going to add any of my own.

  From Wisconsin to North Dakota

  We’re practically halfway there. After leaving Milwaukee, we’re on our way to Fargo and Rugby, North Dakota: the geographic center of the North American continent. From Happy Days to the Coen brothers’ Fargo: a culturally and climatically interesting transition.

  I’m happy I chose to cross the USA by train—if for no reason other than to see the faces of Americans when I tell them: astonishment, consternation, admiration, and compassion, all in a single glance. “Why?” After ten days of travel, more than two thousand miles of rails, and many baffled faces, I’ve drawn up a reply. Actually, fifteen of them, one for each hour of travel that awaits us today.

  Because last year we took the train from Moscow to Lisbon, and at that point, there was no more land to cross. So we just started over again on this side.

  Because a train is a rolling theater, where the scenery and actors change constantly.

  Because a train is a plot all ready and waiting. Comedy and tragedy; though the first is better, all things considered.

  Because outside the windows, there’s America on parade, and it’s impossible to tear your eyes away.

  Because every once in a while, it’s nice to be a stranger in a strange land.

  Because on a long journey, your thoughts get longer, and they take on a surprising clarity.

  Because Amtrak is a stars-and-stripes lesson in stoicism.

  Because the air is clear, the colors are bright, and the spaces are immense (the sleeping compartments, on the other hand, are small, agreed).

  Because repacking your suitcase every day is a Zen exercise.

  Because it’s nice to be lazy while on the move.

  Because you can talk, when you get tired of reading. And watch, when you’re tired of talking.

  Because everywhere, we find Italians who help us, encourage us, guide us, and correct us.

  Because today we’re traveling on a train that’s called the Empire Builder and we’re interviewing people with names like Rocky (commissioner, City of Milwaukee).

  Because North Dakota is one of the few states that, in my many trips to America, I still haven’t visited. And I liked the ads for Montana canned meat when I was a boy (“Down in Montana where the cowboys herd cattle / the struggle for justice is a genuine battle”).

  Because the idea of giving up travel is irrelevant at age twenty, at thirty it’s pleasant, and at forty it’s understandable. But at fifty it’s just plain reckless.

  Rugby, North Dakota: The Center of America

  In the last twenty-four hours we’ve met a park ranger with a plush catfish in his bag; a couple from Savannah, Georgia, who are traveling by train at their doctor’s orders; a deputy sheriff who was kind enough to let us ride in his squad car; an ex-mayor who’s become an undertaker with a 1968 Cadillac convertible; the editor in chief of the daily newspaper the Tribune, who sells stationery in her newsroom; the owner of radio KZZJ AM 1450, whose sons are in the National Guard; and a young female soccer player named Bailey, immediately nicknamed Miss North Dakota.

  Miss North Dakota! We like the sound of it. Bailey moved here from California and works with her family at the Cornerstone Cafe. Just outside the restaurant, a rock obelisk announces: GEOGRAPHICAL CENTER OF NORTH AMERICA. Fascinating: as long as you don’t come to Rugby ready to pick nits. There are others who claim that the exact location is in a marsh two miles outside down
town Rugby. Others say that the center of the North American continent is located farther east, near Devils Lake. Fourth version: the obelisk was erected in 1931 by the local Lions Club near a restaurant, which was moved in 1971. The proprietors took it with them, and they installed it in front of their new location. Geography at the service of commerce: viva l’America!

  North Dakota! The state with the lowest rate of unemployment in the USA. The oil boom is attracting people from all over the Union. A controversial extraction technique (hydraulic fracturing or fracking) produces half a million barrels of crude oil a day, and could give the U.S. energy self-sufficiency by 2030. Home prices have doubled, and it’s impossible to find workers in the drilling area; the McDonald’s in Williston reaches out two hundred miles away to find employees. New people are constantly arriving in North Dakota, and the economy is thriving. “Here in Rugby even the prison is thriving, after folding years ago for lack of prisoners,” Dale G. Niewoehner, owner of the Cadillac, three churches, the funeral parlor, and a patriotic stars-and-stripes tie, tells us with some satisfaction.