Guilt Trip(s)

Friday night there was another train versus pedestrian fatality in Arlington Heights. According to the earliest reports in the suburbs' Daily Herald newspaper, the victim was male. Given very little information by the police, the article is mercifully brief and devoid of speculation and drama.

With probably more than a thousand miles of commuter railroad track spread out in a spider web from the hub of Chicago, the Metra Rail system sees a lot of incidents involving cars, trucks and pedestrians. Friday night's was at least the second pedestrian incident at the Arlington Heights station in about a year.

While I certainly feel sorrow and pity for the victims of these incidents, I feel just as strongly for those who have witnessed them. As a perhaps overly-sensitive human being, I can barely stomach the thought of seeing another human being (or just about any being) die; to see one's life snuffed out amid the carnage wrought under the wheels of a train is the stuff that nightmares and a lifetime of psychiatric therapy are made of, and I'm only imagining it.

I was having a fairly slow day. By 5:00pm I had just barely made my goal for the day, when I was dispatched to pick up a fare in Mt. Prospect, the next town along the Metra Northwest line to the southeast of Arlington Heights. When I arrived I saw literally hundreds of people standing around on the train platforms, in the parking lot, and along the street adjacent to the station, which usually means the line has been stopped, and people are free to find other means of transportation, until the problem is fixed. My fare got in, and I said, "Train problems?"

He said, "No. A pedestrian was hit in Arlington Heights." It took no more than that to turn the entire conversation to all of the past incidents of memory.

He asked me to take him to the Rosemont CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) station, about 10 miles away toward the city. I forgot to make a turn that would have brought him to his destination a bit sooner, due to traffic, and so we wound up staying on Northwest Highway, running parallel to the Metra Northwest line's tracks most of the way. When we drove through Des Plaines, there was easily double the number of stranded people than I had seen at Mt. Prospect. "I know which way I'm heading back," I said to my customer.

Rosemont is about 10 minutes — with rush hour traffic — south of Des Plaines. I dropped off my customer in Rosemont, and the fare came to $20 exactly, and he gave me a four dollar tip. I headed back to Des Plaines. A block past the Des Plaines Metra station, I picked up two men who wanted to go to Arlington Park, the station that sits across a parking lot from the Arlington Park horse racing track, and which is the next station beyond Arlington Heights, where the incident had occurred - $25.60 plus a three dollar tip.

At Arlington Park I was hailed by a gentleman who asked me to take him to the Barrington station, which is two or three stops northwest of Arlington Heights - $22.00 plus a four dollar tip. The trains had begun moving again, after nearly three hours of delay.

From Barrington, I drove empty all the way back to Arlington Heights, where I was flagged down by an attractive young Polish woman who had apparently been blown off by a cab she had called for. Arlington Heights was her stop, and she just needed a ride home to Rolling Meadows - nine dollars, plus a 4 dollar tip.

By the time I ended my Friday, I had exceeded my goal by nearly fifty percent. A man had died, but in the relative chaos his death had caused, I saw opportunity standing in rows along the street.

Something about this makes me feel dirty.