by Phillip Barron

Created on: June 23, 2008

DINING CAR AHEAD... reads the scrolling red-LED marquis at the front of the Coachclass car.

The northbound Carolinian, Amtrak's train 80, follows a corridor of sweet gum, pine, and mimosa between Durham and Washington, DC. Views from the diesel-driven iron horse alternate between lush greenery grown right up to the tracks and wide landscapes of irrigated fields nurturing unnaturally straight rows of commodity corn. Queen Anne's Lace and honeysuckle flower over rusted barrels and tired sheds, at times competing with wild raspberry.

"Alexander, turn that down," the man beside me admonishes a pre-teen sitting in the row behind.

I have the aisle seat, and in the window seat is a man who started talking to me even before I finished stowing my backpack in the overhead compartment. He sees in suburban sprawl a Babylon of limitless greed and growth, of world-class furniture and more colleges per population than anywhere else in the world.

He complains of alligators swimming the streets of New Orleans while the NAACP met in Tampa, then somehow makes the connection to his theory that Ronald Reagan enlisted the Pope to help bring down the Soviet Union. Although he desires my full attention, I catch glimpses through the window of backyard camping and front porch good-byes.

"Dad, how do they turn the train around?," Alexander asks.

"Three-point turn," the man laughs hard at his own joke.

When the landscape levels and lily pads appear outside the window, he resumes theorizing.

"It's not politically correct to call them swamps anymore, you know." He doesn't wait for me to answer. You know' is just something he says to be polite, to acknowledge that I am sitting next to him even if he will not let me talk. "They're wetlands. You know, we call em wetlands to show respect for all the life out there. But really we don't care about nature if tree farms are acceptable replacements for forests. As if deer and raccoons and squirrels wanted to live with trees all lined up in straight, pretty rows. If we still had a real sense of community, not one focused on consumerism, then we might..."

"Dad, Dad," Alexander interrupts, "this is where we get off."

"Oh," the theorist quickly unplugs his cell phone, climbs over me, and charges down the aisle. I slide over to the window seat.

EXIT

Between the wetlands and the tree farms are post-industrial towns, variously preserving or ignoring turn of the century architecture. In the front yard of a brick ranch style house in eastern North Carolina, an elderly

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>