Off the Rails

by Beppe Severgnini

  Rugby, North Dakota! One radio station, one motel, no taxis. A patrol car meets us at the train station and gives us a lift to the motel. They love to have visitors up here, the policeman at the wheel explains. The population is 2,879; the last murder, he informs us, dates back to 1963. I’m pretty sure we won’t modify those figures: we won’t settle in Rugby and we won’t have children here, nor shoot anyone.

  We walk everywhere with our noses in the air, like the greenest of tourists. The sky seems three-dimensional; the clouds have muscles. In the winter, they assure us, it’s very cold. It’s no accident that the people who settled here in the late nineteenth century came from Germany and Norway: they felt right at home. Still today, the two ethnic groups constitute seventy-eight percent of the population. My traveling companion, Karl Hoffmann, has learned that a Mrs. Hoffmann lives here, and he’s made arrangements to meet her. But the lady doesn’t show up, and he grumbles about the general unreliability of Germans.

  We like North Dakota. It’s the illegitimate offspring of the railroad (Great Northern Railway, 1890–1970), and the name of the train that brought us here today—and will take us away again tomorrow—commemorates the fact: Empire Builder. A protein-driven, pragmatic, optimistic America, not particularly given to subtleties.

  The Empire of Fracking

  They shouldn’t call it the Empire Builder. They should change the name to Delay Builder, considering how much it accumulates. We arrived in Rugby, North Dakota, two hours late. We were supposed to leave Rugby at 7:07 a.m. for Malta, Montana: the train finally got moving at 9:33. In no particular hurry. They even moved it a hundred yards to help us load our luggage.

  Yesterday we spent the day with Dale G. Niewoehner, the former mayor, who works out of his house: on the ground floor, a funeral home (with coffins on display, cremation urns, and a laboratory for the preparation of the corpse); upstairs, a living room, a bedroom, and relics of cruise liners (including the Andrea Doria), a collection of bricks from famous buildings, and a buffalo head. Today, with his wife, Marilyn (“We met at a funeral”), he took us to the station and explained why Amtrak, on this stretch of the line, is often (always?) late. The tracks belong to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railway, which always gives precedence to freight trains. Passengers can wait.

  The Empire Builder will cross North Dakota, Montana, and a corner of Idaho as it heads for Seattle, Washington. Aboard the train we meet Mandy, who’s going from Minnesota to see a friend in Williston, Montana, at the heart of the new oil boom. “It’s a crazy place,” she explains. “At McDonald’s and Walmart they pay twenty bucks an hour, three times as much as in New York, and they still can’t hold on to their employees. Working on the wells, the guys get thirty bucks an hour at the very least. They’re coming here from all over America. Lots of men, lots of alcohol. I’ve seen guys fighting over a girl. Testosterone and petroleum. Wow!”

  Mandy’s friend works for twenty-five dollars an hour, cleaning up oil spills, things like that. Fracking calls for the pumping of liquids or gases under high pressure deep underground in order to break up layers of rock, and there is a risk of damaging the water table. In some places, it is said, drinking water has become flammable. Before we stop, I suggest to Soledad, our producer, an experiment for the video cameras: she can get out at Williston, drink from the faucet, and then light a cigarette. But she’s not about to fall for it; she’s from Rome. “I don’t smoke,” she replies.

  Just before we cross the Montana border, a new time zone. In Montana the sky is gray and light blue; big bellying clouds get a running start across the plains. Every so often it rains briefly. The oil wells stop; the light-colored low hills begin. The semitrailers leave dust trails.

  In midafternoon, three hours late, we arrive in Malta, Montana. The name was chosen by a Great Northern executive who decided to spin the globe: his finger landed on the island in the Mediterranean. Sunshine, wind, eight streets, the Lucky Bullet bar, and a few pickup trucks with rifles in the gun rack. The owner of the Maltana Motel—the only motel in town—seems surprised by our arrival. But then, so are we, come to think of it.

  Martians in Montana

  While you’re waiting to fall asleep, it’s nice to hear the sound of trains, wrote Don DeLillo. Maybe he’d taken a room at the Maltana Motel in Malta, Montana, and he wasn’t troubled by insomnia. The massive freight trains of the BNSF continue to pass by, and let’s just say that they don’t pass unobserved. They plunge wailing over the unmanned level crossing and then vanish over the distant plains. Two Herculean locomotives, two hundred stack cars loaded with containers, many of them with Chinese writing on the side. From west to east, from east to west, tireless nocturnal roars.

  At eight thirty p.m., still in bright daylight (it’s now mountain time), we were already shut up in our respective motel rooms. An hour later, my companions, I’ll learn the following morning, knocked on my door to inform me that an appointment was canceled. Come on, guys. If two hundred railcars can’t wake me up, how on earth are the knuckles of a well-mannered young Italian woman going to do it?

  Malta is a place Wim Wenders would have loved: a film set waiting for a film. Straight roads, right angles, cobalt sky, and faded signs. The local attractions are the remains of a dinosaur (Leonardo) and the outlaw Kid Curry (Harvey Logan), who robbed a train a few miles from here in 1901. That was the last robbery the Wild Bunch pulled, before Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid fled to South America.

  We wander through empty streets, cut horizontally by beams of sunlight, until they invite us to come on in at the Lucky Bullet bar: courteously, without drawing a gun on us. The American West we know from movies, the minute we draw a little closer, breaks down into real-life stories, personal and often tough. Jane, at the bar, shows us a photograph of her daughter’s father, who left the day before for Afghanistan; her girlfriends tell us of a small town that’s supportive but nosy; Dennis and Dodee show off the saddle they won at the rodeo.

  Next door, an auction of bric-a-brac attracts a little crowd. On the shelves is the everyday history of America. Tiny objects, small home appliances, cheap memorabilia that someone treasured, are now all lined up to gather dust and casual glances. Not far away, at the restaurant in the Great Northern Hotel—a piece of railway time travel—the twenty-three-year-old Krystal, a good-looking blonde with messy hair, shows off her gleaming, enameled fingernails to the video camera; at last something happens around here, her eyes clearly state. She explains that she came here from Portland, Oregon, in search of work. She found it immediately, but she doesn’t know how long she’ll stay.

  At seven in the morning—brilliant sunshine, as if someone had polished the sky the night before—we meet an engineer with three young daughters. They took two rooms at the Maltana Motel. Their car is parked outside their door like a horse next to a campsite. The girls are eating breakfast on the hood of the car, in preparation for a swim meet. I’d love to chat about the forthcoming presidential election, but it would be cruel at this hour, and I don’t.

  We spend the rest of the day wandering along the tracks, while waiting to reboard the Empire Builder and head west. Right now, the train is two hours late, but that could become three hours, or just one: Amtrak is a form of life lesson. Big sky / some rain / no train: that’s fine, though. After all, we kind of asked for it. We came by train, and we have no car, which in these latitudes is inconceivable.

  Four Italians, a Swiss, and a German visiting the one museum in town, talking about dinosaurs, and kicking at garbage along the track bed.

  Martians in Montana.

  The Green Cushion of the Pool Table

  A man who claimed he had been hit by a bullet fired from a speeding car while he was in Montana working on a book, to be called Kindness in America, has confessed that he actually shot himself. The sheriff’s office believes that this was a desperate act of self-promotion, but provided no further details.

  How ca
n a place like this help but capture the imagination? The item is front-page news in the daily paper, the Great Falls Tribune, and it casts a garish pop light on Montana. As we arrive by train from the Great Plains, the spectacle is magnificent: the Rocky Mountains close off the horizon to the west, like the cushion of an immense pool table. Then the train runs along the river and climbs up toward Glacier National Park. The greenery glistens with rain; there are lots of hoodies and fleeces. We arrive at Lake McDonald—it’s the actual name; there are no sponsorship deals involved—but we can go no farther: the pass is snowed in. It’s June, I’ll remind you.

  In the national parks, either it’s raining or it’s just stopped raining, or else it’s about to rain; that’s one thing I’ve learned in thirty-five years of traveling in America. It’s enough to take a quick look around and you can understand why this country produces so much fine film and television. There are the backgrounds, there are the characters, and they both speak eloquently.

  Americans, especially outside the big cities, are well-disposed toward foreigners. We’ve met and talked to hundreds of people, from the Atlantic to here. No one has ever refused to answer our questions.

  Glacier National Park is no exception. In the wet park, with blue-green lakes and ice in the distance, we meet Montana families with young daughters eager to travel to Africa; a couple of gray-haired ladies unsure whether to pursue the allure of a grizzly bear or that of a gin and tonic; a young conservative from Spokane, proud of his blue-collar city; two brothers who operate a mountain hut for hikers, furious with American politics in general and angry at Washington, DC, in particular. “They lie to us!” they shout, taking turns.

  “What about?” I ask, politely.

  “Everything!” they shout back

  At the Polebridge entry station we meet a park ranger with a ponytail under the regulation ranger hat. He’s originally from the Black Forest (Germany) and he knows all about Milan, where he lived for three years, working as an engraver. Karl, euphoric at the unexpected appearance of a compatriot, asks in English: “Have you seen any bears around here?” But he gets the pronunciation wrong: instead of bear, he says beer. The Teutonic ranger maintains his composure: “A beer? I’d love one. But I can’t drink on duty.” Then he laughs: “No bears today.”

  If David Lynch had spent the day with us, he could have done the entire casting for a new season of Twin Peaks. I would gladly have taken a walk-on part. A fisherman, maybe. The kind who watches the world go by, and smiles.

  Spokane and the Future

  Anybody who comes to Spokane and exclaims: “What a lovely city!” should probably be given a Breathalyzer test. But it’s not a simple city either. It’s hard to get around on foot, it’s challenging to visit in June—fifty degrees Fahrenheit and wind that’ll whip a newspaper right out of your hands—and it’s difficult to pronounce. It’s Spō-kan, with the emphasis on kan. It was the name of a native tribe, and it means “children of the sun.” I have to say, I haven’t even seen the sun.

  Still, Spokane—in Washington State, near the Idaho line—is an interesting place. A city that is in no way weighed down by the burden of its reputation, in part because few Americans even know where it is. A friendly place, delighted to be the subject of attention. The editor of the Spokesman-Review (founded in 1894) threw open the doors to his newsroom, introduced us to his reporters, and invited us out to dinner. A pragmatic, rapidly changing city, Spokane sometimes gives the impression it doesn’t know exactly where it’s going, but it keeps going all the same, and that redounds to its honor.

  We got here at three in the morning, after departing from Montana. Train stations at night have a particular allure, though it’s sometimes hard to capture if you’ve just spent eight hours aboard an Amtrak train (without sleeping berths and running two hours late, so no surprise there). We head straight for our beds at the Hotel Lusso. The name means “luxury” in Italian, but don’t be fooled. It’s an absolutely unexceptional place. If there’s any luxury around, you’ll find it in the hotel around the corner, the majestic Davenport. In 1914, it was the first hotel in America to feature air-conditioning; before giving their guests change, they’d polish the coins until they looked newly minted (an early and innocent forerunner of “money laundering,” come to think of it).

  A century ago, the money that circulated in Spokane came from the mines, the lumber mills, and the railroads, which also brought many Italians here. A prosperity that endured only a few years, but left lasting traces. Among the regular guests at the Davenport were Bing Crosby, who grew up here, the transatlantic aviator Charles Lindbergh, the actor Bob Hope, and the writer Dashiell Hammett, when he was an operative for the Pinkerton agency. The hotel has recently been restored, and relics of its glory days line the walls. The Davenport has the allure of all hotels that have seen better days: the Adelphi in Liverpool, the Metropol in Moscow, the Plaza in Rome. Places with more mileage behind them than ahead of them.

  Like us: the Atlantic is far away, we’ve almost reached the Pacific, and soon we’ll be able to celebrate.

  The Ocean in the Background

  “Punctually late,” says Karl. Amtrak’s tactic, so far, seems to be this: never to be on time, but methodically so. In Seattle, on the other hand, we arrived half an hour early. Our American fellow travelers explain skeptically that this is a result of what’s known as padding. By this point, there’s no doubt that the train will have built up quite a delay; and so on the official schedule, an arrival time is indicated that takes that delay into account. This ploy, more Italian in nature than American, helps to placate the passengers on their arrival. The only ones it made happy was us, because we didn’t understand the trick.

  In Spokane the Empire Builder is separated into two parts: some cars will go on to Seattle; others will head directly for Portland, Oregon. Even though Portland is our final destination, we’ve decided to see the Pacific Ocean—it’s a matter of principle. We will therefore pass through Everett and Edmonds and arrive in Seattle, the city of Amazon, Nirvana, Boeing, Jimi Hendrix, and Starbucks.

  We leave Spokane at 2:20 a.m., after a beer with a view of the waterfall and two hours of provisional sleep. Six zombies try to sleep on the train, but the western dawn doesn’t cooperate. The Empire Builder rolls along the Columbia River as the sun peeks under the clouds. Someone announces Icicle Canyon. Frequently people spot elk, beavers, and stags here. Not today. They’re probably sleeping. Lucky them.

  We roll under the Cascade Range, through the longest railroad tunnel in the U.S. (7.8 miles, completed in 1929), and continue toward Skykomish, amidst forests of pine and Norway spruce.

  On this leg of the trip, the sleeping car attendant has a gleam in his eye. His name is Kevin H., or at least that’s what his badge assures us. He knows both geography and spelling: if he utters the name of a place, he also explains how to spell it. He’s authoritarian, ironic, and scatterbrained: a rare combination, and not just aboard trains. When we ask him permission to do something—can we lower the window while the train is moving at walking speed?—he says “No!” and at the same time nods his head yes. Which means we’re all taken care of, both with the rules and with common sense.

  Despite my weariness, I’ve recovered my energy: I give credit to the landscape. Or else, after sixteen days, I’ve gotten used to the train. Another forty years and I’ll become a professional like the lawyer David Peter Alan, whom we’ve already met twice during this trip. He spends his life on the rails. “Never taken a plane once in my life!” he proudly declares. Like the pianist in the wonderful film The Legend of 1900, who spends his life on an ocean liner, David has transferred his professional and social life onto a means of conveyance. He writes about it and fights to ensure that it’s used better. “If one man alone has ridden and described all the rail lines in America, that means there aren’t enough of them!” he declares. A little Lincoln of the railways: admirable.

  My expertise i
s marginal at best, in comparison. Let’s say that I’ve acquired certain mechanisms. I know how to pile up my luggage and push it down the train corridors (always use vertical suitcases with four wheels). I know how to open the doors between cars with my foot, and not get hit in the face by them. I know how to drink coffee out of paper cups without burning myself, and how to fold up the tray table without amputating my fingers. I know where the flush button is located in the microbathroom, and I can wash my hands while pushing the faucets with my thumbs. I know exactly where the outlets are located, and I can find them in the dark. I know how to adjust the air, and the location of both the reading light and of the hooks that serve as coatracks and hangers. By now, the sleeperette and yours truly are a battle-tested couple.

  The Empire Builder rolls along the Snohomish River valley and we begin to see farmland; pickup trucks, like silent mechanical insects, appear and disappear alongside the train. At 8:50 a.m. we’ll arrive at Everett; as he makes the announcement, Kevin H. seems slightly sentimental. When the salt waters of Puget Sound, which opens out into the ocean, appear, we become sentimental ourselves.

  We left from the Atlantic; we arrived at the Pacific. We left with the rain, and the rain was awaiting us upon our arrival. In Seattle they say: “We don’t tan; we rust.” As for us, we don’t run that risk. Two days in the city and then we head south, toward the other Portland.

  In Amazonia!

  The month of June is no guarantee, around here. They call it Junuary, a portmanteau of June and January. But we’re lucky. The rain at our arrival has given way to blue skies—and let’s admit it, we like those better. To the west, beyond Puget Sound, are the Olympic Mountains. To the south is Mount Rainier, with its snowcapped cone. When Seattle decides to pretty herself up, she has few rivals. In the U.S., only Chicago, San Francisco, and New York can compete.