Glaswegians on a Train

A couple of years ago, on a trip to England, I was riding a British Rail train north from London to Penrith, where I intended to catch a bus to Keswick in the English Lake District. It was a simple itinerary, and therefore, unlikely to play itself out smoothly.

We had made it most of the way to Penrith when the train came to a stop—and there we sat, silent upon the rails. The local passengers rolled their eyes and shook their heads in a show of resigned, philosophic disgust. Eventually a PA system broke in, clotted with static, and something resembling a voice growled from the speakers. Deep within that unintelligible rasp, I thought I recognized the words “track troobles.”

The phrase left me with an funny image of unruly tracks bent on causing mischief. So why do tracks get troublesome? Are their grievances justified? When will their “troubles” be over so that we can continue our journey? The explanation “track troubles” can mean anything, and therefore means nothing. That makes it the perfect explanation to give to the public who for some reason still seem to half-heartedly expect an explanation in cases like this.

It was not long before the train started to move again, but then a noisy altercation broke out between rail cars—and I could see it all through the car door window. Several youths were suddenly there, berating another young man, shoving him, slapping him, roughing him up. All this was accompanied by a symphony of profanity beyond anything I had ever heard. I noticed, next, that my fellow passengers had become rather intensely interested in their fingernails, or in picking lint from their clothes, or in examining the dreary, track-side brambles through the windows of the moving train.

They young men were Glasgow toughs, no doubt, for Glasgow, Scotland, was where this rail line terminated. Their language was nearly indecipherable. The only words I really recognized were “fooken” this and “fooken” that. The ringleader was a near-emaciated Grotesque—all gnarly and tattooed, shrieking out curses and threats and performing (because it did seem like a performance) a towering rage, as if he were an obscene star-tenor in a hellish opera.

No doubt the poor victim had broken a code, probably some minor thing, but enough to trigger an insane rage within the Ringleader in whose world all this cruelty and madness undoubtedly made sense. It was tense and silent inside our rail car as the passengers worried that the toughs might turn their attention to us. There was no sign of any security people on the train, and minute after minute went by.

Then, finally, help arrived—not some crack security team with bulging guys in wraparound sunglasses. The help was not there to “defuse the situation,” or if that failed, to taser everyone in sight. It was just one man in a rail uniform, and he was not big, not tall, not strong—and he was not young. Nevertheless, he was pissed.

He waded in to those young men without hesitation, wagging his finger in their faces, and soon had them scattered to the winds. It was a miraculous display of courage and moral indignation: not on his train. Later, the little train man passed through our car gathering up litter and putting it into a plastic bag. Just another shift in the life of a worker who does his job.

I wish to hell I could afford to travel more. I like being in another country—a country not my own. I am just an observer then, and a bit of a ghost. It’s not my country, and I have no right, and limited inclination, to judge that country or it’s people. I am a step further detached from the raw scenes of human life. What a relief! What a beautiful thing it is—the anonymity, the witnessing of life at a remove.

Some will condemn this kind of attitude, but for me it is the only path to even a glimpse of transcendence. Sure, I will still help old ladies across the street, and do my part where it is needed. But I’ve seen the human race at work for more than a few decades now, and I know it goes on this way forever. I like to move among them, and hear their voices, and see their careening parade, but I keep my distance. It is distance, distance that I mean to honor here.