The Upgrade

by Paul Carr

  “Paul! I was looking for you! I read your blog post about Sarah Lacy and Mark Zuckerberg. I had no idea you were so funny. Wow—that Lacy chick sounds like a cunt.”

  “Actually, I feel terrible about that post. I’m sure Sarah Lacy is a lovely person and a damn fine journalist; I was just being jealous and stupid.”

  That’s what I should have said. But Hannah—lovely, sexy Hannah—thought I was funny. In fact, I got the distinct feeling she was flirting with me. Holy shit—Hannah thinks I’m funny? Because of that horrible blog post?

  “Yeah, total cunt.” I said. “So, how have you been?”

  Chapter 600

  French Toast in a Bowl

  I left Austin the following morning on Amtrak’s Texas Eagle service, having finally arranged to pick up my rail pass from the local ticket office. The pass was actually supposed to have expired a few days earlier, but when I explained that I was a journalist from London, researching a book about great American train journeys, the ticket agent had kindly agreed to postdate the ticket so that I could use it for the full thirty days.

  Only two trains a day stop in Austin—one heading north towards Chicago and one heading back in the opposite direction. Miss your train and it’s a twenty-four-hour wait in a station that’s essentially a concrete shed next to a railroad track. So infrequent are the services—and so slow are the trains—that they haven’t even made the effort to build a proper platform: passengers just mill around next to—and sometimes on—the tracks. It’s more than a little freaky to watch a group of children picking out coins and other conductive debris from between what would, in the UK, be live rails.

  The real difference between the railroads in the UK and the US, though, is with the trains themselves. My USA by Rail book had prepared me for them to be impressive, but when the Texas Eagle finally rumbled into view it was like the bit in Jurassic Park when Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern first see a dinosaur. The cars are huge double-decker beasts filled with what must surely be the largest train seats in the world. Even when occupied by Texans they still look big.

  Sleeper cars are available but, given how much legroom there is, there’s really no need to spend the extra money; just bring a blanket and a pillow. One other feature of the seats, though, that I hadn’t expected: they’re almost all empty. And there’s a good reason—train journeys in America are long. Really, insanely, long. I had decided finally to make my way back to New York, first traveling up the middle of the country to Chicago, before changing trains to head east back to Penn Station in Manhattan. The Austin–Chicago leg alone would take twenty-nine hours, and the man in the ticket office had warned me to add another three or four onto that for delays.

  “The problem” he explained, “is that outside of the major metropolitan areas, there are no routes designed specifically for passengers.” Instead, Amtrak’s services run on freight lines, which means that freight services take priority. If a train loaded with coal or Mustangs needs to pass, the Amtrak service pulls into a siding and waits, even if that means having to reverse back along the tracks for a few miles first.

  If I were trying to get somewhere in a hurry, Amtrak would be an enormously frustrating way to travel. But I wasn’t in a hurry. I still had almost two months left in the country under the visa waiver and no particular place to be, just a couple of freelance articles to write about ETech and South by Southwest, and maybe some adventures to have on the way to New York. With those goals, the train would be perfect: a moving office where the view from the window changes every second and I could get on and off at any time if the opportunity for adventure presented itself.

  Like, say, if as I was boarding I overheard two girls talking about how they were leaving the train in Dallas—just six hours north—to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

  601

  Dallas. You have to love a town where the banks display signs politely reminding you that you’re not allowed to bring concealed weapons inside. I hadn’t needed to negotiate on the hotel room, having found a family-owned place a couple of miles from the center of town with a rack rate of $60 including breakfast.

  There was no Wi-Fi—which, had I been staying more than one night, would have been a huge problem. But for one night—meh; I’d survive. It was already getting late and I was ready to head out and experience St. Paddy’s Day, Dallas-style. With no idea of the geography of the town, I fell back on the cab driver recommendation trick and was soon in a place called Lower Greenville, which the driver had assured me was “exactly what you’re looking for.”

  Apparently “exactly what I was looking for” was a shit-load of students: Lower Greenville was swarming with them. Every bar was boasting drink specials—“beer for a buck” screamed one sign—and, in a subtle nod to the day, they were all plastered in gaudy shamrocks, inflatable pints of Guinness and crocks of plastic gold. The students had got into the spirit of things too: the guys were all wearing comedy leprechaun hats while the girls were wearing bright green t-shirts with slogans like “Kiss Me I’m Irish” and—confusingly—“There’s Whiskey in My Jar.” I actually wrote that second one down in the hope of translating it later.25

  Both genders wore strings of colorful beads, made of metallic plastic, around their necks; I asked one chap what they signified and he explained: “you ask a girl to flash her tits, bro, and if she does, you give her the beads.” It seemed like an excellent system.

  After stopping for a quick bite of sushi—which, I accept, was an odd thing to choose in Dallas—I found the only bar that wasn’t totally packed with children and ordered a beer. On a small stage at the far end of the room, a band called Sold for Gold was playing a protest song, of sorts: The damage is done

  it’s about the government.

  About the United States

  They fucked up the government, man.

  I took out my notepad again and began scribbling this stuff down. After the Lacy/Zuckerberg transcript, the popularity of my blog had spread far beyond Robert, Maureen and my friends back in London. Total strangers had started to email me in response to my mini-travelogues and I wanted to keep them interested. Surely a night in Dallas—on St. Patrick’s Day—would provide some good copy.

  I’d only written a few lines when a tall blonde girl, wearing a baseball cap but, disappointingly, no beads, came and sat on the stool beside me.

  “What ya writing?”

  “Oh, just taking some notes,” I looked up and realized how amazingly beautiful she was.

  “I’m a journalist.”

  “No way! A music journalist?”

  Why not? “Sure,” I replied, “I’m writing about bands in Texas who decided not to go to South by Southwest.”

  “That’s so cool! Hey, my friends and I are just heading down the street to another bar—our friend’s band is playing. You wanna come with?”

  Obviously I do, yes.

  602

  The problem with the first night in a new hotel is that, even when you wake up sober and in your own room, it’s still disorientating. But the next morning I had neither of those comforts. The blonde girl’s friend’s band—I’d forgotten to write down their name; some music journalist I turned out to be—had been excellent, especially after the half-dozen beers the blonde girl and I drank while we waited for them to come on.

  After the gig, we’d ditched the rest of the group and headed to a club for a nightcap. Unfortunately we’d just missed last orders so, really, there was no alternative but to head back to her apartment.

  “My room-mate is in Austin for South by Southwest. We can drink her vodka—I’ll just fill it with water.”

  Students. Now waking up in that same apartment, I realized I had less than two hours to get back to my hotel, shower, grab my luggage and make my train to Chicago. Not for the first time I was glad I hadn’t had a chance to unpack before heading out to get trashed.

  603

  The Texas Eagle service to Chicago takes twenty-six hours and the range of books available at Dallas’s Union
Station made the average airport newsstand look like the Smithsonian. Instead I bought Esquire, GQ, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and every other magazine I could find that wasn’t porn and didn’t promise “five hundred tips to drive your man wild.”

  Even having applied the porn filter, the woman behind the counter—who couldn’t have been older than thirty-five—looked at the cover of GQ, with its photo of model Adriana Lima, and raised both eyebrows.

  “You want a bag for this one?”

  No, I felt like saying, I’m just going to finish off here.

  As the train rolled out of Dallas, I wandered down to the viewing car and sat in one of the swivel chairs that line both sides. Sooner or later during the journey, everyone on the train would have to pass through where I was sitting: the viewing area was above the bar and next to the dining car. What better place to people-watch and hope for adventures?

  Riding on the Texas Eagle the previous day I’d assumed that the idea of the observation car—what with the floor-to-ceiling windows and all—was just to allow passengers to look outwards—to see the Capitol building in Little Rock (a replica of the US Capitol in Washington, DC) or to take a photograph of the station at Texarkana where the train pauses briefly with half in Texas and half in Arkansas, or to marvel at the views of the mighty Mississippi, as we passed over it …

  But if that were the intention then the service wouldn’t pass all of those places in the dead of night. In fact, as I began my second Texas Eagle journey I became convinced that the huge windows and the pitch darkness outside and the bright lights inside had exactly the opposite purpose—to turn the entire observation car into a giant inward-facing mirror. A custom-built environment for people watching.

  Certainly, in contrast to the barren wastes and sleepy towns passing by outside, a huge variety of human life could be found in the observation car; Marines returning home from Iraq, young teachers grading piles of paper while their pupils slept in the adjacent coach, students on their way to spring break, the old, the young, the black, the white, the rich, the poor. And, with nothing to see but each other, they couldn’t help but talk. I met a teacher—she couldn’t have been a day over twenty-three—who was taking a carriage-load of kids on a school trip to somewhere or other, on her own.

  The respect she commanded from her charges was astonishing, and we talked for a while about the differences between education in the UK and the US. She couldn’t grasp why I was concerned about her ability to handle such a large group. “But they’re children,” she kept saying, “and I’m an adult.”

  Over dinner, I made the acquaintance of three frat boys (I forgot to write down their names—but I know at least two of them rhymed)26 who were on their way back from what sounded like a memorable spring break in the south. We got talking after I overheard them discussing one particularly successful romantic encounter from the trip …

  “Dude, I’m serious—she said I made her come like three times. She said I was the fuckin’ best she’d ever had …”

  “Dude! You gonna tell Beth?”

  “Fuck no. But—yunno—fuck Beth. Beth’s fuckin’ frigid, man …”

  “Yeah, but she had some sweeeet tits.”

  “True, man. That’s fuckin’ true …” I was sitting quietly, reading one of my half-dozen magazines, for at least ten minutes before they noticed that the waiter had seated me opposite them.

  “Oh shit, sorry, man … that was pretty rude.”

  “No problem,” I replied. “I dated Beth for a while. I know what you mean.”

  “Ha—you’re all right man. You Australian?”

  Sure.

  604

  Back to the observation car—having paid $21 for my three-course meal, including a New York strip steak—I decided to settle down for the night rather than heading back to my proper seat. A group of college kids, drinking half-bottles of house27 wine, had produced an iPod and some speakers and it wasn’t long before the carriage was rocking to the sounds of the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”

  For the rest of the night I listened to a succession of iPod playlists— the Beach Boys turned to Soulja Boy turned to Cher turned to Snoop Dogg—and met even more people. I met two cheerleaders on their way back to school in Detroit who hated Hillary Clinton with a passion I expect they’d normally reserve for pre-makeover geeks.

  “If she becomes president then this country is screwed,” said one of them. “You know who’d make a great president? Oprah.”

  I met a Marine who was traveling home with his wife and nine-month-old baby. He’d been in Iraq for a year and this was the first time he’d met his daughter. The three of them—the Marine, his wife and the baby, slept across two seats on the train, cuddled up against the cold. They couldn’t afford to fly, he explained. “And, anyway, I don’t trust planes.”

  I met a guy called Mike who travels the country by railroad, making his money from people who are about to have their homes foreclosed by the bank. He explained how his business works: “I arrive in a new town and walk around the poor streets looking for foreclosure notices. Then I knock on the door and introduce myself. I offer to buy the house for fifty grand. It’s a fraction of the real value, but by selling to me they don’t get foreclosed which means their credit rating isn’t affected. They can take the money I give them and start again.”

  “What, start again in a tent?” I asked, amazed by the shitty deal he was giving these poor people.

  “Sure, if they like. The point is, I’m giving them a better break than the bank would. These are people who took out mortgages they couldn’t afford. What did they expect? The way I see it, they’ll lose their home anyway. At least I give them money to start again and their credit is clean.”

  “And then what do you do with their houses?” I asked.

  “I call the bank. Offer them maybe 40 percent of the true value of the place. They always take it. No one wants to be stuck with a house with a recession coming.”

  “You think there’s a recession coming, then?”

  “No doubt about it. You know there’s a recession coming when business is this good.”

  At around 4 a.m., the train pulled to a halt, I assumed because a freight train needed to get past. The party in the observation car had finally wound down, and Mike and I were the only two people still there, except for a couple of girls sleeping in the seats opposite. But then a curious thing happened. From the sleeping carriage two cars down, people began to emerge, wearing pajamas or wrapped in sleeping bags, rubbing their sleepy eyes.

  From the main carriage, too, passengers who had clearly been asleep were waking up and padding down the train steps, out onto the platform. It was freezing cold outside and the station building looked deserted.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Mike. “Where is everyone going?”

  “We’re at Poplar Bluff. It’s a smoking stop—last one before morning.”

  “They’re waking up to smoke?” I said, taking another swig of my beer. The bar was closed but I thought I could see a bottle of whiskey peeking out of the top of a bag belonging to one of the sleeping girls, so all was not lost.

  “Yep,” said Mike, “addiction is a hell of a thing.”

  605

  I slept for a couple of hours in total, but kept being woken up by people walking through the carriages. Truth is, I didn’t really want to sleep; I was enjoying watching the towns rolling by outside the window and thinking about how sorry I felt for all the people out there who owned houses.

  I thought about what Mike had said—“no one wants to be stuck with a house in this economy”—and I thought about those people who would dearly love to be stuck with their houses, but who were forced to sell them to people like Mike.

  The girls opposite—more cheerleaders, as it turned out, heading back to school in Chicago—had given me the rest of their bottle of whiskey in return for promising to mention them in my book about great American train journeys.28 I took another swig and settled back for another nap. Bre
akfast was served in the restaurant car and, to make sure I got a seat, I’d made a booking the previous night for 8 a.m.

  Spending the night in the observation car had been fun, but also freezing cold, so I was looking forward to a big American breakfast. I’d even be prepared to overlook their problem with bacon. But as I arrived at the restaurant car, the waiter was taping a hastily handwritten sign on the restaurant car door. “Sorry—continental breakfast only (bananas, Rice Krispies, oatmeal, yogurt and coffee).”

  “Bananas and Rice Krispies?” I said. “What continent is that breakfast from?”

  “Sorry—that’s all there is. We were supposed to get a delivery of plates last night but they didn’t show up. We won’t have any until St. Louis so we can’t serve any hot food.”

  I sat down at one of the communal tables, across from an oversized man in a red checked lumberjack shirt. He introduced himself as Doug, “a steelworker until I finally came to my senses and retired.” We talked for a while, about Tony Blair—once he’d placed my accent—and how he wanted to thank us for our support of America and George W. Bush. He hoped we’d support President McCain just the same.

  I smiled and said all the right things until the waiter came over to take our order. Doug had read the sign about the lack of breakfast choices, but he had a plan.

  “I don’t need a plate,” he said. “I’ll just get some French toast in a bowl.”

  The waiter stopped scribbling on his pad. “I’m really not sure we can do that, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “Our French toast is served on plates.”

  But Doug wasn’t budging.

  “Son, I’ve seen most things in my sixty-nine years—I think I can handle French toast in a bowl.”

  I liked Doug. The waiter explained that he’d have to check with the chef, and scurried off to do exactly that.