The Return to New England

I endured a 15 hour train ride from Ohio to the Berkshires yesterday in order to return to my home state, disembarking in Pittsfield, MA (of all places...) some eight hours behind schedule thanks to the Amtrak train that kept pulling over for freight and then going at frustratingly slow speeds before pulling over again and so on. It probably would have been more interesting if it hadn't been raining the entire day across OH, PA and the northern cities of New York State. The train pulled into Pittsfield a little bit after 7pm in the rain.

The transportation center had already closed for the night as one other man and I got off the amtrak train. I didn't want to hang out with him after he said that he'd been on the trains since Provo, Utah, and had come to the Berkshires to find God. I thought they did that just fine in Utah. So instead I decided to walk along one of the main streets in Pittsfield to see if I could find a coffee shop, since it was only 7:30pm. Fat chance. There were lights along the road, but they were all tied to stores that already had closed for the day and 1-2 upscale restaraunts that weren't ideal places to wait for potentially up to two hours. Eventually (quickly) I ended up at a Brooks Pharmacy to buy a card and get cash back a minute before it closed at 8pm. The girl behind the counter called me a cab to take me over to my cousin's school in a different part of town. I stood outside in the light rain with my baggage and awaited the taxi's arrival.

They said it would take 15 minutes but it was there in five. Oddly, the driver even stopped the ride mid-way so that I could get smaller bill change, since he didn't want to make large change for me. But he carried on anyway and $11 later I was dropped off at Miss Hall's School, right back into the uppercrust world of New England boarding schools. I rang the bell with my bags and a prickly-looking older woman said, "How can I help you?". I said "I'm Nellie's cousin." She said in a disbelieving tone, "How should I know that?" I replied, "Well...her father is my mother's brother..." and she said "That would make you her cousin. Let me see if I can find her." A few minutes later Nellie appeared and all was righted; within the hour we made it back to the house in the continuing rain.

I didn't realize how exhausted I was after the travel yesterday, and slept soundly through to nearly noon today. It was refreshing to get a full sense of the continuing fall season by gazing at the Connecticut hills after lunch. The afternoon took us into New York state just over the border to Millbrook, driving by my mom and aunt's old college campus, which, sadly, is now a creepy-looking (but mysterious, not foreboding) complex of old buildings that have fallen into disrepair and await eventual development renewal. But when that actually will happen is anyone's guess, since the college closed in 1978 and the buildings are still there looking exactly the same, but neglected. Sad.

Am moving on again tomorrow back to Hampshire. The Empress, The Crazy Pitches, friends, nostalgia, video editing and a taste of the Amherst fall are all awaiting there.