‘Gates’ To Amtrak

         Ominous clouds hung over the grey November sky when the car stopped in front of the Kansas City train station. A wind gust off the Plains scattered leaves in a chaotic counter-clockwise swirl to the east, my direction home to St. Louis. 

         My friend thought it natural to arrive an hour before the train’s scheduled 3:30 departure.  But for me, being so early was like unplugging my internal timepiece, which now blinked on and off like a digital clock that had lost power.

         “Sorry to be dropping you off so early, but at least you won’t be breaking your neck to get here on time like you usually do.” 

         Old friends know me too well.  He witnessed my fire drills exits, rushing out the door wet haired for an appointment scheduled ten minutes hence, but fifteen minutes distance via the legal speed limit.

         I checked my bags at the station, and returned street side to mosey a block over to Crown Center to browse.  A boutique there contained a display of Gates barbecue sauce that I neglected to purchase during my visit.  Price: $ 10 a bottle! 

         Gates makes the best sauce in a city known for its’ barbecue.  But it would cost half that rate at one of its restaurants, and there was one close by. 

         With a Midwesterner’s instinct for fair trade and an aversion for cab fare, I decided to hoof it.  A jog to Gates, buy the sauce, and back in 45 minutes.

         The hill to Gates stands steeper than a town on the edge of the Great Plains deserves, and this one was near a mile long.  But the wind carried the redolent aroma of hickory-smoked brisket that led this Pavlovian dog uphill at a brisk pace.

         Upon entering Gates, the counter clerks assail customers with an exclaimed:  “HI! Meh I hep YOU!”, more a command than a query.  They repeat the dictate with each patron’s arrival, shouted by hard working folks in cathartic relief from life’s toil.  They keep yelling to help until the flustered customer orders his meal.  I once stuttered something, and walked out with two slabs of ribs when all I wanted was a sandwich.

         But no matter how much they want to help, it seems that they could not find enough bottles to box a case of the sauce that made Gates famous.  She searched and searched while her cohorts shouted at and served a dozen customers.  Her crew finally scrounged up a half dozen bottles of their Original—but no Extra Hot Sauce.  Instead, she offered bottles of Sweet & Mild, a soulless suburban facsimile of the real stuff.   I told her to save it for their Johnson County customers.

         Thus endowed, I set off with sack of sauce in tow facing a shifting wind now bearing from the North, bringing with it a sense of panic.  It was now 3:05. 

         Trotting down a steep hill into a cold head wind with a sack of sauce proved difficult, especially for a sexagenarian, a word that has nothing to do with either virility or vitality.   Progress proved slow.

         Fortunately, a Main Street bus appeared 500 yards off.   The bus could easily take me that ¾ mile in 15 minutes, so I joined the huddled group on the corner, and waited. 

         And waited.  The bus idled at the distant intersection for five minutes, but finally lurched forward, and made a round house turn to the right—as in out of sight. 

         My perceived deliverance was an eastbound 31st Street bus.  An elderly woman told me not to worry because the Main Street bus was scheduled to arrive in 10 minutes hence.  Her watch read 3:15.

         The only thing to do was to trot as fast as possible while toting a sack of sauce.  Running disjointedly, my torso twisted to the left, I tried to make eye contact with passing cars to hitch a ride.  But they all drove on, averting their eyes from my visage.

         Time marched insistently towards 3:30.  My father’s complaints about my being tardy came to mind. He came from a railroad family, and they were always on time.  The irony of my retort that I was the Amtrak of the family—a train that I was trying to catch that was leaving ‘on time’—sounded like its’ engine’s departing whistle.  I envisioned my father wearing a conductor’s uniform looking out from rear car of the train, eying his pocket watch that read exactly 3:30, waving good-bye as the train rolled away.

         The traffic light ahead turned red, offering a last chance to beg a ride from two young black men in a small pickup truck, which offered a better chance than trying to hitch a ride with a white man who would distrust a perceived homeless man carrying a bag.

         But they were suspicious, too.  It can’t be often that they receive a plea for a ride from a strange white guy running in the street with a sack in his arms.

         “What’s in the bag; you got a gun in there?”    

         “It’s Barbecue sauce!  Here look.  My train leaves in five minutes.  I gotta get to the station.  I’ll give you ten bucks; its just a half a mile.  I’ll ride in the back of the truck!” 

         They let me hop in bed of the truck.  When we arrived at the front of the station, I reached for my wallet, but they laughed and asked for one of the bottles of Gates instead.

         The tracks where the train sits in waiting lie 20 feet below street level.  But the station’s escalator, which runs in reversible directions, was running UP.  Perhaps Amtrak switched its’ direction after what it thought was the last passenger had come down.  Not wanting to wait for the elevator, I sprinted down the escalator in a three steps down, one step up progression.

         Upon reaching the train, the conductor tersely advised that ‘the train departs in two minutes.

         Time enough to dart to the newsstand, buy a Sunday paper, and  nonchalantly board the train just in front of the conductor who closed the door behind us.  The train was on the roll.

         When the conductor made his rounds for tickets, he found me in the bar car, winded, perspiring and a drink in hand.  I asked him to check back later for my fare.  It wasn’t that I was too tired to fetch my ticket from my bags, which sat in a jumble in the corner.  No, better to sit undisturbed to extend the exhilaration of having survived a run along the edge of time, while dreaming of Gates BBQ sauce spread in thick strokes over a slab of ribs.