(The following story by Andrew Herrmann appeared on the Chicago Sun-Times website on December 1.)
CHICAGO — That time the two women took off their tops on the Metra train? And, half-naked, how they tossed toilet paper around the rail car?
And when the conductor asked them to get dressed, the other passengers booed?
Man, that was one for the book.
So was the time the kid puked into the conductor’s hat, and the time the blind guy ran into the pole, and when the busy lady wore her dress backward. And that time the guy who missed his Metra train jumped a slow-moving freight and ended up in Iowa?
Those were all ones for the book, too.
That book is That’s What I Call Commuting (1st Books), a collection of Chicago commuter train tales — many ribald, some heart-breaking — by Mike Holinka, a trainman for 30 years.
Holinka, who co-wrote the book with longtime rider Ed Gabrielse, calls the slim tome “an unvarnished view of what really flies on Metra.”
The 54-year-old “swing collector” on Metra’s Union Pacific West Line to Geneva says most trips are uneventful: “We run a tight ship,” he says. But like any other job that includes contact with the public, riding the rails has its crazy moments.
He decided to write the book after years of swapping stories with other trainmen. Ninety-five percent of the tales in the book happened to him; 100 percent are true, he insists.
Not a few of them are naughty.
In a chapter he calls “Undies Optional,” he describes women who flash conductors from the upper level. The first time it happened to him, he thought it was a trick the other trainmen arranged.
“The reaction at first, you’re like whoa!” said Holinka. “Now, it’s more fun to make believe it’s not happening.” The exhibitionists, he said, “cannot stand being ignored.” In “Coaches for Rent,” he tells of a now-discontinued practice of conductors charging amorous couples extra to cuddle in darkened empty train cars late at night.
Nothing surprises Holinka, a married father of three. For a train, he says, is real life on steel wheels. Conductors can’t help but be sucked into the comings and goings of their passengers. Months lead to years, years lead to decades.
“It’s a metamorphosis: We watch them get out of college, get a few paychecks. Their clothes get nicer. They get promotions, and suddenly they’re grownup people,” he said. He can tell when regular riders are happy — maybe from a big score at the Merc, or a new child — and when they’re sad, such as after a botched project or a firing. So attached is Holinka to his passengers, he attends an annual Christmas party with about 20 regular riders.
The most disturbing thing about train life are the suicides. Involved in 40 such accidents, Holinka said he remembers “every one as though it was yesterday.”
Trainmen talk about the pattern: Victims often pace across the rails as if trying to make up their mind. Then they turn their back to the engine. He writes admiringly of the good-hearted passengers, who, despite being delayed, rarely complain. “They instinctively realize that the loss of an hour or two is not nearly as much of a disruption as the fact that there will always be an empty chair at the dinner table” for the families of the suicide victim, he says.
For the trainmen, the investigation can be worse than seeing the mangled bodies.
He writes: “As the process grinds on, there is a growing, sickening feeling. This is not a search for truth at all. … This is a search by lawyers for money at the expense of all the parties whose lives have already been shattered.”
That’s What I Call Commuting is available at amazon.com.