Cash for Concrete Slabs

Mack Hall


The president takes a lot of metaphorical flak (and should) for his successful seizure of two large automobile manufacturers and hundreds of banks, but we can’t blame Amtrak on him. Amtrak has been the government rail passenger non-system for over a generation.

And you know how successful the government takeover of passenger trains has been. Whenever anyone plans a business trip or a vacation, Amtrak is the first mode of transportation that comes to mind. Why be enviro-insensitive and drive your own gas-guzzling car to drive to the beach or the Alamo on your own selfish schedule when diesel-guzzling Amtrak can dump you among the wreckage of decaying cities in the middle of the night? Do it for the whales. And the dolphins. And global warming. And, like, y’know, stuff.

The administration has budgeted some stimulus money (get excited; it used to be your money) to help build an Amtrak railway station in Beaumont.

Once upon a time Beaumont featured stations built and run by the Santa Fe, the Southern Pacific, and the Missouri Pacific and Kansas City Southern (shared). With the seizure…um…federalization…of railway service in the 1970s all passenger service was transferred to a single Amtrak shack out in some Bermuda Triangle at the end of a shell road. Then the station was abandoned and destroyed, and ticket service was transferred to a 1-800-like-we’ll-answer-the-‘phone number. All that is left is a concrete slab in a Night of the Living Dead darkness.

The city of Beaumont and Amtrak want to build a new Amtrak station more convenient to humans than to ghosts, snakes, and mosquitoes. That better site, though, is owned by a private railway company which would prefer that passenger trains not block their trackage, even if those stops are only about six times a week.

And fair enough. If you run a business you don’t want the government mandating that a government-subsidized business completely take over your store and parking lot even for fifteen minutes every other day.

I say this calls for another beer summit. This time, though, we call in the cameras and jazz it up a bit with geezer wrestling to determine the outcome. While the president and his Chicago pals pose with stage-prop beers they won’t drink, T. Boone Pickens, Al Franken, and Ted Kennedy will wrestle in their underwear to determine the outcome. Pickens will represent the private railway company, Franken will give his muscle and sinew for Amtrak, and Kennedy will show a little skin (okay, a lot of skin) for Beaumont.

The public and ESPN will pay to watch and broadcast these three aspects (aspects with one ‘s’, if you please) of the American character rasselin’ for rails – let us call the event Cash for Clunkers, or perhaps A Teachable Moment.

Given his rotundity, Senator Kennedy might have to pay a carbon footprint penalty to donate to the Mary Jo Kopechne Memorial Swimming Scholarship.

T. Boone Pickens (what were his parents thinking?), given his wind-power scheme for which he wanted, yes, your money, could blow away the competition.

Al Franken hasn’t got a chance, for no one wants to touch a fellow who looks like the strange little man who hangs around a mall parking lot in an out-of-season raincoat.

The winner decides where the new Amtrak station is to be built. PETA and the EPA must give clearance, and the proposals must all be certified organic. The contractors, sub-contractors, and construction workers must be certified as multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-sex (with transgender issues addressed in a sensitive manner), and vegan. Any passenger trains that stop in Beaumont must be green hybrids and the engineers must be able to provide original birth certificates.

Given the history of Amtrak and other conflicting government entities, we can expect to book a ticket through Beaumont’s new Amtrak station in, oh, twenty years or so.