An Evening at Union Station

This morning, after a reasonable night’s sleep, we’re laughing over the event which I’ll call “An Evening at Union Station.” Since my brain isn’t quite awake yet, this will undoubtedly be a rambling account.

          We took the Amtrak from Oceanside to Los Angeles yesterday in order to spend time at Olvera Street, and later visit the Japanese American Museum in Little Tokyo where we met our son, Dan, for dinner.

           When our day was almost over, Dan accompanied us back to Union Station on the Gold Line, and we settled down to wait  half an hour for our train.  We were enjoying the parade of “the beautiful people” who were arriving at the station for a real runway-type fashion show when an announcement came over the loud speaker, “Those passengers on train 790 to San Diego will have a TWO HOUR delay.” No explanation, just the facts, ma’m.

          Urging Dan to leave as he has a life of his own, we found comfortable chairs and cookies and milk to help our moods, and tried to rest. Ha. The runway fashion show was in full, high-decible swing, complete with a wantabe comedian and pounding music.

          An hour and a half later, the show ended and another show began. The women tottering back to the Gold Line to Hollywood were a sight not to be missed! I’ve never seen so many shoes with five inch heels and three inch soles in so many styles in my life. Just to describe a few: Red velvet, green velvet, orange alligator which encased the woman’s feet like strange, mutant oranges, black patent, pink and clear plastic, and boots to the calves, but at least twelve inches below the hemline of the dress. There were shoes with straps which sort of gave them a torture-instrument look, connected to black soles and of course, five or maybe six inch heels. You get the picture, I think.  Very entertaining but stressful as I kept expecting one of them to fall over..

          THEN, “Passengers on train 790, your train will now leave at 10:15 p.m.”  O.K., we were no longer being entertained, and were slumping in the waiting room seats, when a uniformed guard came up and demanded to see our train tickets! When we asked why, she replied, “We are checking for vagrants and homeless who try to sleep in the station.” I kid you not.  I guess we weren’t looking our best, but come on, this was a real case of adding insult to injury. So we showed our tickets, and decided to walk over to where the line would form. Suddenly, an Amazon leaped out of the Amtrak office and yelled, “Train 790 is loading on track 10!” and almost everyone left in the station sprinted down the tunnel.  I was reminded of Dave’s rugby shirt, “Trample the Weak, Hurdle the Dead.”

          Once we got on the train, a train employee told us it wasn’t number 790, but it would get us to Oceanside. Huh? Turned out he was wrong; it was the right train, we got to our station, and back home, just three hours later than we planned.