Outside It’s America
Central Chicago
Our visit to Chicago began with tacos, which, all things considered, is a pretty good way to start. The flight over wasn’t without its dramas, what with delays and limited menus on the flight, but let’s not dwell on that.
We were in Chicago just for a couple of days, during which we walked a lot. Despite the short time, and despite our concentration on the touristy bits, the city rapidly became my favourite of all the American cities I’ve visited. The whole of the area around the river has been well and thoughtfully developed, and everything we ate or drank was great, albeit expensive.
We had two great breakfasts downtown – the second, a shakshuka at Egg Harbor Café, with strawberry orange juice and coffee, was outstanding. On Sunday, three blocks of State Street were closed off and given over to music and craft stalls etc. That was where I found an excellent local brewery, Black owned, and enjoyed a can of their Imperial Porter – although at 8.5% it was only one can.
I’m looking forward to another weekend in Chicago in September before we fly back to Scotland.
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We Amtraked from Chicago to Michigan. I used Amtrak previously to travel from New York City to Philadelphia in 2018 and the experience this time was a little different – disorganised and chaotic at Chicago Union Station and noticeably older rolling stock. The seats were comfortable, though, and so was the ride, although it was not high-speed by any European or Asian standard.
In my story The Beast Astray (published in Coyote in the Corner), I wrote:
The Zephyr slowed for us on the great curve around the edge of the Feather River Valley. David and I jumped into the morning sunlight, as the hum and ring of the tracks decayed. Without warning, I was lost in a vision of a future with no railroad, where everyone drove automobiles that only they occupied; an America where countless millions withdrew into solitary selfishness while the steel ribbons that bound the country together rusted into memories and museums, and a great dream died, taking its power with it.
Amtrak
I was reminded of that as the train snaked its way along freight tracks through Indiana. I saw something a couple of weeks ago (that I can’t find now) about the contentious subject of high-speed rail in the US and specifically the New York-Chicago route. It currently takes 19-22 hours by rail when using any European or Asian network it would take 5 hours. I’d have said that the climate crisis, and the change that will pretty much inevitably follow from that, means that the route will sooner or later require the infrastructure for electric cars or mass passenger transit.
Anyway, America was outside the train. Southwards from Chicago and through Indiana was a journey through industrial dereliction for the most part. Just like the last time I was on Amtrak, Jean Ritchie’s voice was in my head as we clattered past rusting wagons and flatbeds and the skeletal remains of more-or-less abandoned steel mills. It was a journey through the archaeology of a long-past economic and industrial model and no one has the inclination or the wherewithal to clean it up.
Ypsilanti
Michigan was different – wetlands and forests and an abundance of deer interspersed with farms and small communities. Just as in the UK, there was the depressing sight of clusters of modern homes, uniformly unimaginative and uninspiring in the cookie-cutter conformity of their design and construction.
That’s a shame: there is a great American vernacular style of property familiar from any movie of the forties and fifties through to the seventies. Cable channel obsessives will remember the properties that used to be renovated by Steve and Norm on This Old House. I’m not sure how things shifted from style and individuality to modern bland designs, but shift they did. Happily, Ypsilanti, where we are now, is full of classic old buildings, including some dating from C19, and it’s all the better for it.
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