Everyday People

Do you ever sit in an airport or walk down a busy street and wonder about the people you see or those who pass by? What things or events have shaped their lives? What have they seen or done that would surprise me? What memories do they cherish...or fear?  We get wrapped up in stereotypes and first impressions and fail to see people as they really are. People are incredibly interesting....all we have to do is open up and listen or watch.

I got started on this line of thought because I recently took a train trip halfway across the country. Train stations are only a shadow of what they once were but they still attract all sorts of people. If you watch, you will see them all...There are grandmas and grandpas heading off to see their grand-kids. You'll see single moms struggling with luggage and a couple toddlers in tow. There are whole extended families off on a trip or maybe just there to see one of their members off on a new adventure. There was a recent veteran on one leg and and older veteran on oxygen with a story he had to tell.  There were Doctors. lawyers and Indian chiefs. There was another gentleman on his way home after a trip to Viet Nam and the 45th anniversary observance of the My Lai Massacre. There were a couple of young guys whose pants were so low that they defied gravity...how do they stay up?

In my opinion, one of the best things about Amtrak is the policy of "community seating" in the dining car. Passengers coming into the dining car are seated at tables wherever there is an available seat. Since I travelled alone, I was always filling in with a table of two or three people from all over the country on their way to a places I've never heard of or considered visiting. I had breakfast with a man on his way to Osawatamie Kansas. Osawatamie was the home of John "Osawatamie" Brown, the famous (or infamous) abolitionist/insurrectionist of the 1850s. We had a chat about John Brown...he still is a controversial figure after 160 years. Another one of my lunch table acquaintances was a National Park Service guide at one of our former president's homes who recently was "let go" because of the sequester budget fiasco.  I hope this gets settled fast and she gets called back because she is good at what she does and is committed to her work. Another dining car acquaintance was a editor/publisher of a regional food magazine promoting local farmers and local food production. We had an interesting talk about agriculture and how farmers decide what crops to grow. There was a lady who drags her husband all over the world as she searches out her family tree and discovers new cousins in different countries. He seems to enjoy the ride. There was a couple from Australia on a tour of the US by train  who had travelled all the way across the country and were now circling back to where they started.

I started paying attention to people some years ago when I was starting out on a new job. This was an office job and one of the coworkers was getting ready to retire in a few months. He was a procurement officer and sort of a legend in the office because he could scrounge things with almost no cost.  He was born in the 1920s and raised during the depression and knew how to "make do". One time we were talking and I was surprised to learn that he had been in a local community band when he was a kid. He had given up his musical interests as he grew older and other things intervened...war has a way of doing that. But what he remembered most from his short musical career was performing in a band directed by John Phillip Sousa. Sousa died in 1932 but in his later life he would sometimes travel around and be a guest conductor in small towns across the country. That's what happened -- my coworker happened to belong to one of those lucky community bands when John Phillip Sousa came to town...the highlight of his musical career.

I recall a few other instances from when I worked as a public welfare caseworker for several years. I often had cases of elderly people who were somehow destitute or in need of some sort of public assistance. One of those cases involved the one-time sheriff of Tombstone, Arizona. The sheriff was quite talkative and would occasionally offer to pull up his shirt to show the gunshot wound scars he got while serving the good people of Tombstone.  Another case I remember was a lady who worked as a secretary on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico. She frequently worked with General Groves and J. Robert Oppenheimer and was given a special citation after the war.  Sometimes you are fooled. One young woman told a story about how she had worked the past three years as a "go-go dancer" in Seattle. It was an interesting and detailed story but I learned later she spent those three years in a mental institution.

Most people would consider their lives as somewhat unremarkable. Mine is pretty dull but there are little sparks of excitement now and then. You never know when you will be put into a "situation".  Maybe you are going to see a movie and end up being a survivor of a crazed gun nut. Maybe you will see an asteroid almost crash into your town.  It could happen...odds are that it won't but.... Most people don't go out looking for fame or notoriety. They just happened to be drawn into a situation that proved to be noteworthy after the fact. In some cases they didn't really fathom the significance of the situation at the time.

 

I just find it interesting to pay attention to folks and let them talk.