 |
 |
THE SOCIAL REALISM OF NEW JERSEY TRANSIT The commuter trains travel in from Short Hills, Bedminster, Gladstone, and by the time they near New York, the onboard brokers and traders make the trains an Al Qaeda bomb-boy’s sticky dream, 72 virgins circling beds in a Busby Berkeley choreograph. Oblivious travelers, sleep-deprived, doze past cities along the route. The New Jersey they don’t see is the Gin Lane of their /Star-Ledger/ nightmare: Abbott schools and drive-bys and witnesses who di’n’ see nuttin’. The railway management is more depressed than its passengers because they are awake to see the ruin— you can’t fix a State but you can spray perfume on shit. So New Jersey Transit, to boost its image, decides to emulate the best of railroading’s past, the days when trains ran on time without Mussolini, the days when railways named their flagship trains (for who can forget the folklore of The City of New Orleans, even before Steve Goodman wrote its epitaph, or of the famous Empire State Express and Broadway Limited, sterling silverware, china, and the 60-year-old "colored boy" in his white linen there to serve you with a secret contemptuous smile). There /are/ limits nowadays, so instead of linen and your personal Negroid, they've even taken out the bar car, left us with repellent trains with butt-busting bench seats, but with names that reflect through the beam of blazing darkness the life of a State that dwells in dust. So Train 3248 from Gladstone hereafter is named The Insider Trader, while closer to the common life, Train 1140 from Port Jervis becomes The White Trash, and the flagship Train 2134 from Whitehouse Station now renamed The Negress. And of course there are protests, appearances on the radio by Revs. Jesse and Al, a howl of threats to shut down Newark, called off because nobody would bother to watch. The publicity backfires like a jammed up Glok or Mach 10 fired by a 40-year-old high school kid who was last in class in 1989. Nevertheless, plans are tabled for any more namings or renamings. New Jersey Transit shoves into a drawer some other names that included The Sex Worker, The Homeless Guy, and the Wino— the last a half-a-mil broker cast adrift in the Burbs, who like Stevie Winwood can't find his way home, either— but he's still out there and he’s purloined your name. KW/5-28-08 -- Ken Wolman http://bestiaire.typepad.com http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html ------------------- "Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long." -- Walker Evans