Tales from the Portland Streetcar, 2019 edition, part 1

Jan. 21: A little thing like a transient napping on the streetcar with his shoes up on the seat opposite him can really set your teeth on edge.

Another little thing like an infant in a stroller, absentmindedly chewing on a loop of yarn poking out of his blanky, slowly and automatically, as he stares about the train, can make you smile again.

Feb. 4: I used my work tablet to take a selfie. It was obligatory, I felt; proper customer service.
It started on the NS line shortly before 2 p.m. when a tiny elderly lady got on at either NW 22nd or NW 21st and Lovejoy, and asked me if I could tell her whether she’d be able to catch an A Loop train across the river. I called up the real-time interactive rail map on my tablet and told her there was an A Loop car at PSU which should hit the Pearl in 12 to 15 minutes.

She seemed a little concerned about whether she risked missing the connection if she got off at NW 11th and Johnson or NW 13th and Lovejoy, so I suggested we de-board at the latter, and I could escort her the 4 blocks to the A Loop platform at 9th. Snowflakes had been falling since 1:15, and though the snow wasn’t sticking the flakes were coming down harder.

I was thinking about walking, she said. I had to give up my car when I fell and broke my hip 10 years ago. Even able-bodied people don’t do enough walking, I agreed.

I offered her my arm to leave the train. Once we were on the sidewalk I said, “You can tell your friends we’re dating; it’ll be our secret.” She laughed and said she wished she had a picture to show them, so I said I’d try to take a selfie of the two of us.

She set a pretty good pace for her age and size. We got to talking about travel, and she said she hoped to make one last trip to Palm Desert to visit her “baby brother.” How old is he, I asked. 89, she said. Oh, he’s just a spring chicken, I said. Then she told me she’s 92.

Your mother must be very proud of you, she remarked, apropos of nothing in particular. Oh, I don’t know, I said; my two brothers are a lot more respectable than I am. I’m the renegade of my family of six too, she said. But I got to do a lot of things I wouldn’t have done if I’d given in to my fears. A lot of people are ruled by fear, I agreed with her.

When we got to the A Loop platform, I managed to figure out how to take a dual selfie of us and obtained her email address. I feel duty-bound to report the customer’s assessment was: “You’re adorable.”

Feb. 10: During my Thursday morning shift, a woman watched me stroll purposefully up and down the streetcar and finally spoke up from her seat: “Are you security?”
I explained to her that my job was customer service. We do have enforcement officers, but they tend to dress in black. I help people get where they’re going.
Then I added, “I serve as security to the extent that people tend to behave themselves when I’m on board.”
She laughed and said, “That’s nice.”

Feb. 11: On the streetcar today, my train picked up a septet of Wisconsinites who had come to town for a wedding up on the mountains over the weekend and were flying out Tuesday.

They were mostly late-middle age retirees with a grandmom in a wheelchair. They would have been an octet, but one woman had lost her husband, who had stepped off the train for a moment, concerned that they were on the wrong one, and the doors closed and they rode off without him and didn’t know where he was now.

“He’s not in phone contact?” I asked.

“No, I got the phone,” said his wife in a pronounced Minnesota dialect. “Too cheap to buy another one!” We’re smart [not to have spent money on multiple phones] one of the other men corrected her jokingly.

One couple lives in Eau Claire, the rest were from a small town in the center of the state called Marshfield. I told them my high school alma mater is Marshfield High, because Coos Bay, Oregon was once known as Marshfield. We were probably all named after the Marshfield in Massachusetts, I said, which was in turn named after a Marshfield in England, I imagined.

(Wikipedia says the Wisconsin one was named after a local man, the Massachusetts one after the local marshes, and the Gloucestershire one has an etymological origin that has nothing to do with marshes. Piffle.)

Anyway, they decided to ride the entire A Loop to see the town. Since the train got fairly empty on the lower east side, I started pointing out landmarks to them, from OMSI and the USS Blueback to Tilikum Crossing. My voice and delivery turned more Portland Walking Tours than Portland Streetcar.

I’m ambi-vocalous.

Feb. 18: Operator: Is it Presidents Day?
Customer Service Rep: “Yeah. Wish we had one.”

Feb. 23: I saw a woman get on at the far end of the streetcar who had a shaved head and the blue arc of tattooed writing across the right side of her head above her ear.

When I moved closer to make out what it said, I perceived a more subtle arc of white-pink flesh that started near the crown of her head and swept down across her right temple, its trail crossing that of the tattoo, and I figure it was the entry flap for a past brain surgery.

That illuminated the message of the tattoo, which was in cursive: “Nevertheless, she persisted.”

March 29: At 11:05 a.m., I was riding an A Loop train down NE 7th and noticed a young couple with an infant in a stroller, all three wearing lanyards with the characteristic name ID and logo for some sort of event at the convention center.

I see these kinds of riders often, especially on the east side of the river, but not usually infants with a conference registration ID.

I looked down at him and remarked, “Guest lecturer-presenter, eh?”
The parents laughed and agreed.

The kid was staring up at me, puzzled but curious. I stared right back at him and said, “I got your number.”

Apr. 4: Early in January 2018, I posted the following note on Facebook: “ ‘I finally got into housing!’

“He’s a regular rider who always greets me warmly and sometimes makes a gruff joke, whether we meet aboard a train, on the street, or at the library.

“We chatted about the brutal weather hitting the East Coast, and I told him I’d been in Boston for the Blizzard of ’78. He remembered spending last year’s Portland snowstorm in warming shelters.

“How long you been outside, I asked. Since I came to Portland, he replied. How long ago did you move here, I continued. Seventeen years.”

*   *   *   *   *   *

I don’t know whether I believed him then. But early this afternoon I walked under the I-405 viaduct in Northwest Portland and recognized him parked with a grocery cart on the sidewalk there. He didn’t look up to see me, so I passed by in pursuit of my business.

But I kept thinking about him, so I returned 20 minutes later to talk. He’s always well spoken, as well as soft spoken. I’ve seen him operating a laptop in Starbucks and a mobile phone. He’s courteous, nothing obviously weird about him, ever, save that he’s evidently living on the streets.

You told me a while back you’d found housing, I said, after greeting and shaking his hand. “She flaked on us,” he said. The housing didn’t come through, I asked. No, we lived there for a year and then one day she said I want you all out of here. So you’ve been since? Yeah, this is our go-to spot, he said.

I asked if they get hassled by the authorities. More recently, yeah, he said; especially ’cause some people don’t know how to behave, he added, gesturing down the sidewalk toward another fellow who had a lot of debris spread out across the right-of-way. And they do drugs, he said. I’m 42 and I’ve never done any drugs—why would I start now? People don’t think about how their behavior affects others around him, he said.

What do you do with your days now, I asked. We hang out at the library or at Starbucks, he replied, and we always make sure we have our fare (waving his pocketbook in the air), although they won’t let us take our carts indoors anymore, so I have to lock it up outside. I saw he had two lengthy chains encased in clear plastic with locks, and he told me he wraps his entire cart in blue tarp before winding the chains around it and locking them down. So far, nobody’s stolen anything.

I said I recalled him saying in the past that he was from the Midwest. That’s right, Kansas/Nebraska, but there’s no mass transit there; you have to call a taxi or travel by “heel-and-toe transport.” He said he’d lived in Portland 19 years, and 17 of those on the streets.

Have you ever considered going anywhere else, I asked. No, he said; I like it here. I do too, I said.