(The following article by William Neuman was posted on the New York Times website on December 22.)
NEW YORK — “Chucky!”
The regulars are restless as they board the sixth car on the 7:22 p.m. to Huntington out of Pennsylvania Station. The train has been changed from its regular track and no one knows if Chucky, the bartender, with his red plastic bar cart on wheels, is going to make it in time.
But here he is now, with a couple of minutes to spare. The cry goes up: “Chucky!”
Chucky rolls off the elevator, onto the platform. He lifts his cart over the gap and rolls it into place in the vestibule of the car, putting a wedge under the wheels. Chucky stirs the ice that covers the beer, and he’s open for business.
It’s a few days before Christmas, and Chucky is as popular as ever. The vestibule is crowded, festive. Everyone seems to know one another. It’s hard to move and you barely notice when the train pulls out for Long Island. People shake hands. There is laughter.
Chucky a k a Charles Dudley, tall and amiable, “LIRR” embroidered on the pocket of his blue shirt, is working up a sweat. A 16-ounce can of Bud is $2. Heineken is $2.50. An “oil can” of Foster’s is $3.75. “Spirits” are $4 (a quarter more for Finlandia vodka). Wine (merlot, a dry white, zinfandel) is $3. Soda is $1.25. Peanuts are 75 cents.
At one end of the car, the nightly poker game is under way, a pair of flattened cardboard boxes balanced on knees for a table. Cards, quarters, dollar bills. The players hold their stakes in plastic cups. They sit in for a hand or three, then get up to let someone else in. The game, the regulars say, has been going on for years, since long before the last real bar car was retired in 1999.
“There were no seats, standing-room only,” one regular says of that vanished breed of rolling stock. “There were poles down the car, with cup holders on them.”
For all their holiday cheer, the regulars are out of sorts tonight. First, Chucky almost missed the train. And now, talk has turned to the once unthinkable: the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has proposed banning the sale of alcohol on the railroad, shutting Chucky down.
“What they should do, in this little world we live in, is they should try to allow for preserving some tradition,” says one of the poker players, a distinguished-looking man with pale hair, his red tie loosened a bit, his pinstriped jacket off. “That’s all this is. But there are those who don’t know anything about it.”
And it’s easy, he adds, to be against something you don’t know. The prospect of a dry railroad has made the patrons of this rolling tavern suspect the motives of outsiders; when asked, the man in shirtsleeves will not give his name. “Call him the senator,” one of the card players says. It fits.
Andrea, who watches the game, mostly drinks ginger ale. For the last month, on her way home to Cold Spring Harbor, she’s been riding on Chucky’s car.
“I just happened to get on the train one night and all these people started talking to me,” she says. She smiles. “It passes the time.”
The Long Island Rail Road sells alcohol on the platforms during the evening rush and on two trains each night from Penn Station: the 7:22 to Huntington (although Chucky gets off the train at Hicksville) and the 6:33 to Babylon. But officials now fear that selling alcohol may create a liability for the railroad, should someone drink on the train, then get behind the wheel of a car and cause an accident.
James, bound for Hicksville, rides the 7:22 when his schedule allows. Sometimes he’ll skip an earlier train if the wait is not too long. “It’s camaraderie,” he says. “These guys get together, they ride the train every night.”
A Christmas party is planned at someone’s house. One of the regulars retired recently and they had a party for him.
They all know Chucky and he knows them, calls them by name: Jamie, Fitz, Harry. And he knows their drinks: Bud, Scotch and soda with a twist, Jack and Coke.
“You should really do an article about how great his Bloody Marys are,” says Gary, who discovered the bar cart on the train six months ago.
Chucky has fast hands. Into a large plastic glass go two small cans of Mr. & Mrs. T mixer, horseradish, celery salt, two kinds of hot sauce, a wedge of lemon, red and black pepper, Worcestershire sauce, A.1. and olive juice. A work of inspiration for $4.75.
Olive juice?
“Yeah, olive juice. You don’t think the A.1. is strange? No one else uses A.1.”
A warning from across the vestibule: “Don’t give away any secrets.”
The décor in Chucky’s vestibule is brightly lighted, 21st-century commuter rail: turquoise pleather, speckled blue linoleum, stainless steel. “Watch the gap.”
The train approaches Hicksville. “Last call!” It’s 8:06, the train is in the station, then Chucky and his cart are gone.
The train moves, and now the car is more subdued. A few stops more and the poker players fold: cards and table.
Who was the big winner?
“Nobody even knows,” someone says, “or cares.”