JUNE 8, 2020 – As the train of justice hurtles down the track and we privileged folks decide whether to (a) jump aboard; (b) jump out of the way; or (c) get run over, I must sing the praises of the baked potato.
The track isn’t smooth, so in walking through the carriages toward the dining car, I have to work to keep my balance. Lurching one way, I reflexively lean the other. My hands reach spasmodically for a hold, a touchpoint.
We passengers see the conductor as she calls out stops and examines tickets of newcomers. The carriage floors are littered with the work of her ticket punch.
But none of us has seen the engineer. In fact, none of us has had a good look at the locomotive itself. Does it have a light? A horn? Is it diesel or electric or, God forbid, coal-burning? Is it on auto-locomotion with the indicator at “Full Speed”? Or are we aboard a runaway, driverless train bound for the raging river between past and future, where the bridge washed out in last week’s storm? Or bound toward the freight train racing toward us; a mile-long force loaded with the sins of our nation’s past to be redeemed in the present at an awful price?
The scenery rushes by, increasingly blurred as the train accelerates toward its destiny.
Swaying erratically, I hasten with added urgency toward the dining car and . . . that baked potato . . .
. . . To regain my bearings, I concentrate on how best to prepare a meal from what in blight, the Irish called famine. It’s from a bunch my wife had pre-baked two days before. She’d first rubbed them with olive oil then decorated with sea salt. “Cut it up and microwave for a minute,” she instructs.
I decide to go all in–I mean, all on. I layer slices of cheddar across the top. I pour leftover spaghetti sauce over the cheese. I throw baby spinach atop the sauce. After a minute-and-a-half in the microwave (just to be safe—the sauce was going on a week old), the now twice-baked potato receives a dollop of lite sour cream, then liberally drizzled olive oil and yellow mustard in random patterns. The final flourish: confettis de l’origan.
By the time I consume my baked potato, darkness has descended on another day aboard the mystery train. For the moment, I’m satisfied. I’m ready to retire to my sleeping car, where I the hypnotic “clickety-clack” of the carriage wheels will lull me into full obliviousness.
Who knows what the night or morrow will bring—to us passengers; to the defiant people walking between the rails ahead; to the people who dodge the train, only to roll down a steep, stony embankment into unforgiving, thorny brambles.
As the train without a designated destination rushes into the land of uncertainty, I savor as never before, something as simple as a baked potato with randomly selected fixin’s whimsically applied. In the moment, I’m not worrying that the whole damn country is, quite possibly, now Hell on Wheels.
(Remember to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.)
© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
