CULTURE
Bomb Scare at the Berwyn Station
So maybe this is one of those “magic moments” -- when a group
of former strangers, Strangers on a Commuter Train, become a galvanized group
of pilgrims bound by a common sense of purpose to travel on into eternity,
one for all and all for one, if only just to survive... or at least to get
downtown to work on time.
Whatever is happening to us -- to Carmen and Dina and me, and all the rest of us -- we are going to have a lot of time to think about it. We are sitting on a southbound Red Line train at the Granville Station. At least 30 minutes have passed and we have not moved. The train and platform PA systems blast out occasional, mostly incomprehensible messages about “regrettable delays” of due to “police activity” at the Berwyn station.
Police activity? Yes, but this activity is occurring the morning after the London Underground bombings so, of course, this can only mean one thing...
“What do you think it is?” Dina wants to know.
“A book bag, maybe?”
“An empty bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken?”
Well, all we really know for sure is it is police activity -- or so the PA system keeps telling us.
After a while, I start to think of it as more of a kind of inactivity. Then suddenly, the train doors glide shut and we are moving again. The robotic voice on the PA system apologizes for “any inconvenience you may be experiencing.”
But at the next stop, The Thorndale station, we are again delayed and listen, once again, to the blah-blah on the PA system about “police activity” at the Berwyn station.
“Activity?” I ask no one in particular. “Not much from where we’re sitting,” Carmen, my now new best friend on the CTA, tells me.
The boredom is killing me so I walk out onto the Thorndale platform and try to get a clearer idea of what’s going on. A very hot, somewhat overweight and bored womanwearing a badge that said “official” on her shiny yellow vest was the first to answer my question.
“There’s some police activity at Berwyn station,” she said.
“A bomb threat?”
“Uh-huh,” she said.
“But what is anybody doing about it?”
“Sir,” she said. “We are putting people on special shuttle buses out on Broadway. What more do you want us to ‘do’ about it?”
On Broadway, on a baking hot summer morning, Carmen, Dina, me and maybe three dozen other people stand along the curb searching for the distant chimera of an approaching shuttle bus.
Looking up that streetscape, every four blocks or so, like a kind of infinite regress, we can see another gaggle of would-be train passengers, standing out on a street corner, looking for the bus. This is like being trapped in the exodus of War of The Worlds. Where are we going? Where did these other people come from? Why are we here? Why aren’t we here?
Then the buses begin to arrive. Some say south to Belmont. Others south to Fullerton. Wherever trains are still running, yellow-vested CTA officials are telling passengers to get off and take a bus.
And, of course, when it arrives, it is already full. Another bus, almost but not quite full squeezes us in.
Our bus driver is a pleasant, cheerful young woman, who waves us on. Everything is free in an emergency. Come on board!
On our way downtown to our desks and our coffee mugs and our pictures and plants and computers in our very own offices, we approach the Berwyn Station where all the police activity is focussed. We all peer out the east side windows at the embattled train station. Up above the platform, a TV traffic chopper is hovering and Berwyn Avenue itself is swarming with TV news trucks.
But, if one is looking for evidence of much actual police activity at the Berwyn Station-- bomb squad trucks or emergency command RVs or canine units or any kind of cop car with a Mars light flashing -- one is surprised and possibly even a little dismayed to see only two standard issue police squads parked outside the train station. And their lights aren’t even flashing.
“Police activity?” Dina wonders.
“Let’s call it media activity,” Carmen says.
The bus lurches forward. Soon enough, we are pulling up near the busy intersection of Broadway and Foster. Where we stop. And stay stopped. Completely stopped.
Our friendly driver has stepped off the bus, announcing it is the end of her shift. Union rules don’t permit her to drive us a single minute more -- even if we are in the middle of a nuclear dirty bomb attack on the Berwyn Station. She walks away. Bus still running. Walks! Away! But leaves the bus air-conditioning on because, after all, she’s not a monster.
“Boy, you just don’t fuck with unions in Chicago,” says one of our number, a long-view sage and veteran bus rider. “Not even in a bomb evacuation,” says his seatmate.
By this time, I am about two and a half hours into a commute that usually takes half an hour.
But our bus driver’s exit reminds me: there is nothing more powerful than a union time sheet. And ten minutes later, a replacement driver shows up. She sashays up the side of the bus looking at each of us through the windows, but stops only at the end to light a cigarette and walk back down drawing slowly on each puff. As much as we are in a hurry to get to work , she is not in a hurry to get to work. “Before I get on that god-forsaken bus,” her dreamy posture says, “I am going to smoke this whole damn cigarette, and you are going to sit and watch me.”
“Not me!” Dina says, “I’m not waiting for this!”
“There’s another bus coming by!” Carmen calls out, “Let’s catch it.”
So we do. Dashing out through moving cars, we run and wave our arms and get the next Broadway bus coming down the road to pull over and take us on. Air conditioned again, safely aboard the bus, we huff and puff and wonder how far we’ll be riding, for how long this time.
As we pull up on Halsted, traffic thickens. We decide we’ll make another run for it. We can see El trains moving at the Belmont stop. So we race again to catch a train.
And before you could say goodbye Carmen and goodbye Dina, I was safe at work listening to a 30-second report on NPR about a false bomb scare in Chicago at the Berwyn Station. Had it been real, I would not be here to tell you about it. And had it been a nuclear dirty bomb, most of you would not be here to read it. But it was just a “scare.”
The same time I was riding this train, my son was standing at the Howard El platform waiting for his own trainto come. When I talked with him later, he had the whole story.
“It wasn’t a bomb, Dad,” he said. “It was an old suitcase full of clothes. But we have to take these things seriously now.”
“Yes, I know,” I said. But I wish I didn’t.