I make several trips a year to Chicago. My oldest daughter, Chrystal, lives there, and I take the train from Carbondale to Chicago’s Union Station whenever there’s a concert or other event I want to attend. We usually plan these trips months ahead of time. We buy the tickets for the event and the train. I decide if I want to drive to Carbondale the night before or wait until the morning I’m catching the train. If I’m going up the night before, the hotel reservations are made ahead of time too. We plan every moment of the time I’m there as well. We are not, normally, spontaneous people.
It’s all very coordinated. I always take the early morning train so that I get into Chicago early enough to sightsee or get settled before dinner. The trip has almost taken on the characteristics of a commute. The same train at the same time, both going and coming back. The train, called the Saluki, leaves Carbondale at 7:30 am and arrives at Union Station sometime after 1pm depending on traffic. The return train leaves Chicago at 8:15 am and is scheduled to arrive in Carbondale at 1:45pm, which allows me to get home in time for dinner. However, if you are planning to try this trip, I warn you, although the trains leave on time, they don’t usually arrive that way. Traffic on the lines causes frequent delays from 15 minutes up to an hour.
Despite the delays, I have discovered that I like train travel better than driving myself. The advantage of the train is that it is no more expensive than driving, plus I can relax and spend the time reading or napping instead of fighting traffic. They have snacks and drinks for sale, although the menu is limited and the items about the same as at an amusement park. The seats relatively comfortable and bathrooms are clean. I really wish we had a more extensive rail system in this country. I would travel to many other places.
The latest visit was for a White Sox Baseball game the last week of June. We’d made the train reservation a couple of months in advance. I’d decided to get up early and drive to Carbondale the morning of my reservation. The only thing left to do was buy the game tickets. It was a group purchase through Chrystal’s office.
When it came time to buy the tickets, she asked if I’d be willing to bring her grandson, Xavier, with me. He’d never ridden a train, seen a baseball game, or been to visit her in Chicago. Of course, I said sure. I regularly herd toddlers. One six-year-old would be a snap. After coordinating things with his mother, we added him to my train reservation and Chrystal bought him a ticket for the ballgame. Since I was going to have him along, we decided it would be better to go to Carbondale the night before instead of dragging him out of bed at 4am to make the morning drive. We made a hotel reservation in Carbondale for the night before the train and all was set.
Then things got more complicated. Xavier’s dad, Chris (my grandson), lives in Texas. Chrystal takes him there to visit several times a year. He usually spends school breaks (spring, fall, and Christmas) and, at least, a couple of weeks in the summer with his dad, stepmom and 2 little sisters. Things had been up in the air about when he would leave this summer and they decided, at the last minute, that he should go the first week of July, then his dad would bring him home at the end of the month in time for school to start.
Chrystal said, since we were coming home from Chicago on June 30th and she needed to leave Madisonville for Texas on July 2nd, it would make more sense for us to ride back in the car with her instead of coming home on the train. So, we changed the train reservation from round trip to one way. It required a phone call to Amtrak, but they made the adjustment without a problem and the refund for the original trip went through in a couple of days. Again, things were set, plans adjusted.
I keep two of my other greats, Damion and Elaina, while their mother works, so I waited until she got off at 4pm before picking Xavier up and leaving town. We got on the road around five which made it late for dinner when we got to Carbondale. We just got take out and went back to the hotel to eat in the room.
Here’s where things went sideways. For some reason, I got the 8:15 Chicago departure time in my head instead of the Carbondale 7:30. I set my alarm for 6:30 am, thinking it would give us plenty of time to get to the station. The next morning, I showered before waking the boy. We dressed and took our bags to the car, then went back inside to check out the continental breakfast offerings. Xavier was thinking he wanted waffles. I was hoping for something with more protein. Then I checked the time and saw that it was already 7:15. Getting ready had taken longer than I expected. I told him there wasn’t time for waffles and we just grabbed muffins to take along.
We got to the train station about 7:25 and found a parking space. Xavier was very excited to see the train already sitting there. As I was navigating the menu of the parking ticket machine, he started yelling.
“Mamaw, the train is moving.”
I turned around and watched our 7:30 am train head toward Chicago without us. I had already paid for a parking slot and didn’t really want to drive my car to Chicago anyway, so we went inside to speak to the station attendant. He said, since we came in just after the train left, he could just transfer our reservation to the afternoon train that would be leaving at 4:15pm for no extra charge. But, he warned, it would be arriving late in Chicago due to maintenance delays on the line. He said it would probably be at least an hour past the scheduled 9:45 pm arrival time.
I called Chrystal and explained the situation, pushing away the vague feelings of anxiety. We weren’t stranded. Our tickets were taken care of and I had the car, although moving it meant losing the money I had already paid for 4 days of parking. We were in a, relatively, small town, not a strange city. Safety wasn’t an issue. Still, our carefully planned trip was out of sync.
Chrystal asked what we would do all day and I said: “Well, first of all, we’re going to the IHOP back over by the hotel and get breakfast. We also need to go to Walmart. He doesn’t like the coloring pencils I brought. He wants crayons instead. He also needs a long-sleeved shirt or lightweight jacket. Then we’ll decide where to spend the day.”
She said, “Ok, I’ll do some research on the area and let you know what’s available.”
As we were eating breakfast, she texted me links to a children’s museum and a small park based on Dungeons and Dragons.
She said, “Other than the movie theater, that seems to be about the only options that sound practical.”
We agreed that, since the theater didn’t open until 1 pm, a movie wasn’t practical. I planned on being back at the Amtrak station an hour before our departure time, even though it meant sitting in their utilitarian plastic chairs while we waited for the train. I really didn’t want any more alterations to our agenda.
At Walmart, I discovered they didn’t have any jackets and the only long-sleeved shirts they had were dress shirts. I finally found a pullover sweater in his size on a clearance rack. We grabbed a box of crayons and decided to do the park first while it was still cool. It was drizzling rain, but we had umbrellas and figured we’d be ok. I put the address into my phone GPS and we drove there only to find the gate locked. A sign said they were closed during inclement weather. Things were not looking up.
Finding the museum was more challenging since the link only gave me a street address and, when we got there, the sign pointing the way only had the name of the museum. It appeared, on the GPS map to be behind the mall. I circled the entire space and didn’t find it. We decided to go inside the mall and see if we could find someone to give us directions. As we entered, I decided to check out the “you are here” map and realized the museum was actually inside the mall. We waited on a convenient bench for it to open, paid the $5 fees and went inside. It was a fascinating place. Xavier loved it. We spent a couple of hours there and I had to promise him McDonalds for lunch to drag him away.
When we came out of the mall, the sun was shining and the rain had moved away. After lunch, we found the park gates open and were both enchanted with this small park that was built by a grieving father as a tribute to the son he had lost.
Xavier climbed up and down through the castle, exploring every nook and cranny. After a while, my elderly joints gave out and I sat on a shady bench in front of the main entrance watching him climbing around and running along the ramparts with the other kids there. Eventually, he came and asked if he could take pictures with my phone, then went back inside. As time to leave drew near, we wandered the grounds while he posed for pictures with his favorite statues.
It was nearly midnight when we finally pulled into Chicago’s Union Station. It had been a long, sometimes frustrating, but finally, satisfying day. Our Chicago agenda had to be revised to make up for the lost afternoon, but the time wasn’t wasted. Our Carbondale side trip was just as much fun for our six-year-old kid as anything we had planned in advance. He wants very much to go back. Next time it will be part of the planning.
