Leuthold's, Optimism and Eternal Sales

I’ve been trying to come up with some way to describe Leuthold’s so readers will understand why I think it’s so neat. It’s proving unexpectedly difficult.

Let me start at the beginning—Leuthold’s is an upscale clothing store, somewhat of a half-step between AmberCrombie & Fitch and a Men’s Wearhouse, plus whatever the feminine equivalent is. It’s a pretty small store, too—maybe no more than a quarter of the size of any clothing store in the mall. I might be willing to go up to a third, but my point is this store is smaller than any other clothing store I’ve seen.

Despite its size, Leuthold’s isn’t cluttered. I don’t know how they pulled this off, but the fact they did is a minor miracle. You have clothing racks advertising the latest fashions for teenagers and twentysomethings in the front, and about halfway in you get to the fancy clothes—suit jackets, ties, slacks, whole suits for heaven’s sakes—by name-brand suit manufacturers. Your average farmer can walk in there fresh off the fields and walk out looking as though he was ready to go to a photoshoot or to senior prom.

What is really impressive about Leuthold’s is that it stands out like a beacon in a choice of let’s say “less-than-high-fashion” options. If you’re looking for clothes in Cresco, Alco is pretty much the place to go.  They have your standard Wal-Mart selection, although you can just drive to Decorah and pick up your clothes from an actual Wal-Mart, my preferred tactic. As one of my brothers noted, his secret to fashion success is to go to Ambercrombie and Fitch, see what the latest styles are, then go to Wal-Mart and pick up one of their knock-offs for much, much less. It’s a tactic I’ve cribbed.

Decorah also has its own J.C. Penney, which is noteworthy by itself. It follows the same business model as Leuthold’s—pack a standard clothing store into an area about a quarter of what it occupies normally. Unlike Leuthold’s though, the Decorah J.C. Penney is a bit more…crowded, let’s say. Crowded to the point it doesn’t cater to fat people, because there is no way anyone with excess body fat can fit down the rows. In fact, two people can’t really fit down the rows unless they’re on exceptionally good terms with one another or are veteran contortionists.

Still, the Decorah J.C. Penney’s has managed to fit everything that would be in a J.C. Penney store in the mall into a small little corner location, which is impressive. Its’ also impressive that they’ve abandoned the usual carpet and wood paneling of J.C. Penney’s for wire racks and an interior that looks as though it was constructed sometime in the 1930s. The combined effect is incredible, as though this J.C. Penney was one of the seasonal Halloween stores that springs up in deserted storefronts, only this store isn’t going anywhere.

The J.C. Penney also has sales. Every week there is another sale, advertised in the store windows. I can safely say I’ve seen more sales offered in the J.C. Penney store than in any other store so far. Perhaps more than any other store ever. I haven’t driven by the store in a month and I still know it’s going to have a sale. I like to keep tabs on the store, because I know there will be a point when they offer multiple sales, and I’ll get to take 30% off an item that was already marked down 20%.

So the good people of Cresco have plenty of shopping choices, including the local Dollar General. But Leuthold’s stands head and shoulders above them for its attitude. Having grown up in and around small towns, I remember all the times I’ve had to go clothes shopping and they have all been in Decorah-sized towns. If I tried to buy clothes in my hometown I could probably get a baseball cap. Maybe some canvas work gloves. Leuthold’s though, stands as a beacon of optimism. The owners almost have to believe that people want to look nice, that they will have events in their lives for which they want to look nice, and it prepares them for that possibility. In areas like Decorah this is les s a bet and more of a certainty, but in a small town you also have to assume that not only will people have these events, they will have them several times throughout their lives and that they’ll even want to look nice when they go out on the weekends. Believe me when I say this is not always the case.

So Leuthold’s has bet on this happening in a community of about 5,000. So far, they’ve won their bet, and it doesn’t look like they’re going to lose anytime soon. While you might say it’s just good business, I prefer to say it’s proof that optimism can pay off.

Low Dining

I was coming back from Decorah today after purchasing a CD and I passed the Su-Z-Q s, a popular teen hangout in Cresco. Almost instantly, I knew what I was going to be writing about this week. I’ve written about the fine dining in Decorah, and some of the more interesting restaurants in Cresco. I have not, however, written about the low dining opportunities.

Low dining is a favorite topic of mine, owing in large part to what I humbly call “Chris’s Rule of Eating Out.” This simple rule states  that the likelihood of a restaurant ripping off a diner increases as the price of the meal gets closer to the price of an iPad. Low cost meals can be fun and may give you a more interesting atmosphere than you would get in more upscale restaurants. Still, you have to be careful. Otherwise, you may end up eating at Su-Z-Qs.

The primary food Su-Z-Q’s offers is grease. Deep-fried food rules the menu like Kim Jong-Il rules North Korea, although you will find the teenage staples of hamburgers somewhere on the menu, carving out a kind of No-Man’s-Land on the grill. There may be hotdogs on the menu too, but if I had to double check it I would actually have to go in the restaurant again, and I really don’t want to. I went there once, had the shrimp basket with a salad and a coke. I don’t want to be any more disparaging than I’ve already been, but when your waitress drops a small plastic bowl full of shredded lettuce in front of you along with a plastic cup of dressing, you know you’re not in for the greatest dining experience ever. On the other hand they did have ketchup for the fries, so the experience wasn’t all bad.  Also, at $7 for the whole meal Su-Z-Q’s may be the cheapest restaurant in town.

After I’d driven by, it occurred to me that Su-Z-Q’s is like a training restaurant, where teenagers go to practice eating out. They’re probably aware that there are better restaurants in Cresco, even a couple of fast-food franchises, but for right now Su-Z-Q’s won’t leave them penniless and the food is at least edible. It’s all preparation for when they go out on an actual date and go to a nice restaurant for some dinner, conversation and some awkward pre-sex talk before the sex and the unplanned pregnancy which will keep the happy couple in town for the rest of their natural lives. For now, though, it’s just practice.

My personal favorite area for low dining is the A&W restaurant, which for some reason shares space with a Long John Silver’s fast (sea)food restaurant. The arrangement is awkward, because A&W is all about the ‘50s nostalgia and the Long John Silver’s is all about the illusion that you’re dining on semi-fresh seafood. I’m not sure why these two chains have paired up, but I have seen other fast-food restaurants that host a Long John Silver’s in addition to another chain. They’re the symbiotes of the fast-food world—unable to survive by themselves unless they graft on to another more successful fast-food chain and offer enough value that the host fast-food chain doesn’t cut them loose. To be fair, they do offer decent deep-fried mushrooms. 

My reason for stopping has been and always will be A&W. I grew up with one in my hometown, and I can say that A&W introduced me to the simple pleasures of a foot long coney dog and onion rings, the joy of root beer and that cup of love known as a root beer float. It also introduced me to the concept of a black cow, a root beer float made with cola instead of root beer, which is a lot like going to see a cover band perform. I loved eating at the A&W, and I fondly remember eating there Sundays after church, with my Mom and Dad smiling as they watched my brothers and I chow down and wistfully dream about the time when they would be able to eat in a decent restaurant again.

I’ve been to eat there only twice this year, which is a good thing because the food at A&W’s is packed with extra calories. I’m not sure how, but everything A&W’s serves has more calories than normal. Just breathing the A&W air for ten minutes will cause the average restaurant patron to gain five pounds. Still, I think one of life’s pleasures should be having a coney dog and fries with a root beer float every once in awhile.

The A&W also has a classic car night once a month, usually on a Wednesday evening. I’m not sure why they chose a Wednesday evening, but let’s face it—Wednesday can use the help. Unless you live near a comic book store, there’s nothing to recommend to Wednesdays, so it’s nice to see someone doing their best to make a random day of the week special.

Of course, on classic car night you get to see how many people in the area do have classic cars. A lot of them are senior citizens, driving cars they may well have driven when they were teenagers except that these cars look as new as the day they were given. It’s great to see, especially since there aren’t many venues where you can take cars like that, outside of a classic car show, and I’m not entirely sure where the nearest one is. There’s also a DJ playing all the hits of the 50s, what writer Stephen King called teenage car songs, teenage love songs and teenage death songs. It’s a blast of nostalgia, and I have to admit I like it, although my nostalgia is a tad more recent.

Running and Unique Houses

Chris was tired to begin with. Really, really tired. The kind of tired where you’re aware you’ve overextended yourself and you can accept that, really you can, if you just manage to get a few extra hours of sleep. But where? What project will be cut? What if I zzzzzzzzzzzzzz….

That was pretty much my mindset throughout the week. Also, I couldn’t really decide on what to write. There are a couple of interesting bits I’d like write up eventually, but this time around I kind of wanted it to be topical. And how much more topical could I be than to tell you about what I did on Memorial Day?

There’s only one flaw in that strategy—I really didn’t do anything interesting Memorial Day. I had a decent weekend planned out, where Saturday would be spent leisurely taking care of some writing projects, Sunday would be the day I drive up to Rochester and practice Kendo after a week off, and Monday was…well, we’d see when we got there.

Instead, Saturday was spent trying to make sense of WordPress, then getting frustrated and doing some writing on an adventure. Sunday was unexpectedly reserved for my annual migraine, and then there was Monday. By the time Monday rolled around, I was sick of not feeling good and I wanted to do something. I could have gone up to Rochester, but I didn’t really think there was much point. I’ve been up there enough times that the thrill of being in a city has long since worn off, and while I could have gone on a spending spree, I couldn’t actually think of anything I really wanted. But I wanted to do something, something that would actually get me out and doing something. That’s the only reason I can think of why I decided to go for a run.

Running and I have a love/hate relationship. On my end, going for a run can be immensely rewarding if you take full advantage of your mind’s ability to make you forget how much pain you were in at the end of your last run. If you’re asthmatic, like me, there can also be points in your run where you realize, “hey, my lungs aren’t working! Also, I’m losing consciousness!” Of course, soreness is a part of working out and almost any asthmatic always carries an inhaler, even if they are nudists and have to be creative with where they store it (such as in the hollow of the collarbone area, the superclavicular fossa).  And so I ran.

I’m not sure how far I ran, except that when I finished my lungs felt like I had inhaled lava and I had a case of shin splints that ran from my legs to my shoulders. Still, in the grand tradition of fitness buffs and unstable mental patients everywhere I had fun.

Part of the fun is in seeing the diversity of houses, things which you don’t often see in suburbs. Sure, you may get a bit of interesting architecture, but from the 1950s on it all seems to have been crafted to fit together seamlessly with the neighboring buildings. So you can have a nice house, and houses in the suburbs often are, but a lot of them lack character. Your New York brownstone is the same as the ones on either side of you. Your home in the new suburb bears a striking resemblance to every other house in the development. Much as I love being in cities and taking advantage of all the things you can do in them, I rarely get to see interesting houses until I pass the really expensive areas. Then you see houses with personal cul-de-sacs, massive skylights, actual towers and God only knows what else.

Cresco, though, has a mishmash of interesting architecture throughout its residential sections. I ran from roughly the center of town out to a park in the northeast area of the town, and on the way I started to notice that there was the occasional house that was not like the others in some way. One of the best examples I saw was a house that looked as though it had been constructed piecemeal, with a central room and all the other rooms added as the owner got the notion. The result is a house that is brown and white, and the colors match just enough to persuade the casual passer-by not to take a closer look.  It has two perpendicular stubby wings that jut out from the central portion of the house, with a front door that opens up in the middle of a quarter-circle enclosed patio between the two wings. It is an extremely interesting house and I wonder who lives there. I wonder if they’re the original owner, if there was nothing better they could afford or if they also saw the unique character this house has? If nothing else, you could easily increase your reputation as an eccentric genius by living there. Someone who lives in that house and likes it? I suspect they think slightly differently than the rest of the Cresco inhabitants.

Another great house looks vaguely like an old Victorian mansion, only newer and painted light blue which somehow spoils the whole effect. It’s built on an angle to its lot, so that the corners of the house touch the boundaries. The front door also opens up onto the curb. It’s more common than the previous house, but I like the fact that someone decided not to build a house the usual way. Even little things like altering how the house faces can make a bold statement where a lot of buildings seem to blur together.

When I got to the northeastern Park, the houses started to become more suburbian, which was sad. However, they were also newer. See, Cresco is still far enough out in the middle of nowhere that buying some vacant property and putting up **YOUR HOME** on it is pretty tempting. Not to mention that if you cross over the town line, you don’t have to pay an extra tax for living in the town. The result is that the further away from home you get, the nicer the houses. I suspect that in a few years the trend will be for people to get their new house closer to the center of the town, creating a miniature doughnut effect that can be found in many of your more established cities.

After running along the northern road, and getting tired enough that I had to half-run half-walk the mile or so back to my apartment, I passed along more houses, including one that seemed to have aspirations of being a southern plantation, with an immense veranda. I almost wanted to walk up and order a mint julep, but instead I ran back to my apartment for some much-needed water.

The One About Tornadoes

I’ll be honest, I’ve debated writing about the tornadoes that passed through the area. I could talk about how a co-worker and I drove out during lunch to see the aftermath of the wreckage and the bar food we had at the only place to eat in a small town about eight miles to the north of our office, but it’s hard to talk about. Partially it’s because Joplin, Missouri showcases the devastation a tornado can cause better than anything I can show. Compared to that level of devastation, there were a few buildings that were torn apart, but nothing serious. No one died, which is incredible.

…Okay, I am going to write about the tornadoes after all. Even though the devastation isn’t as catastrophic as what happened in Joplin or even northern Minneapolis, I think the aftermath deserves to be described.

When I came home on the train, I’d heard rumors of a storm hitting the La Crosse area, followed by the train slowing down to the point where a stoned turtle could have outpaced us. Then I heard rumors that a tornado had touched down outside the La Crosse hospital. These rumors were confirmed as I drove through La Crosse, looking for a decent place to eat, and I saw police directing traffic through dead stoplights and power crews in their cherry pickers working on transformers to restore some power. Unlike how I think everyone who doesn’t personally know a public safety employee personally thinks of public safety employees, they appeared to not only be dead serious about their job, but they were also hard at work, as though they were trying to get things taken care of as soon as possible. It was kind of inspiring. Not quite at the level of “Soldiers planting a flag on Iwo Jima” inspiring, but the level of inspiring when you’d see your parent taking care of a leak in the bathroom when you were a kid. I realize this comparison may not be for all people, but when my dad was trying to stop a leak I knew that things would be all right. Eventually.

The drive back from La Crosse to Cresco was not nerve-wracking or concerning in any way. The weather was calm, the skies were clear, and I didn’t hear any mention of impending tornadoes. What I did hear on the radio were the reports that tornadoes had touched down in northern Minneapolis, killing one person. They had also touched down in the southeastern part of Minnesota.

At this point, I need to say that while the boundaries on the map clearly delineate southeastern Minnesota from northeastern Iowa, there’s almost no delineation in real life. People in Cresco go up to visit Rochester when they need a “big city” experience instead of Waterloo because it’s a half-hour closer. One person I knew at work commuted from Rochester to the office. The reason I am pointing this out is because when people on the radio mention southeastern Minnesota, northeastern Iowa is included almost all the time.

So it turned out that a tornado had come down and ripped through the area between Cresco and Chester, the next town north. There had been some property damage, but no one had been seriously injured or killed. This brought back memories of living in northern Michigan, where a tornado had passed within three miles of my parents’ house in 2007, turning acres and acres of forest into clear-cut areas in seconds. It included about 40 acres of an 80-acre property my parents owned, and it did give us a few years’ worth of firewood, but managed to leave the buildings on the property intact. From that point on, I have been amazed at how deadly air can be if it just moves fast enough.

Last week, one of my coworkers wanted to take a look at the scene and see the devastation. I agreed, since I had kind of wanted to myself. There’s something about disasters that draws people like a magnet to them. I think it’s the same intrinsic curiosity that horror writers so successfully tap into when they dare their readers to see what’s under the couch and how badly it can mutilate a human body. Or the often-used comparison of slowing down to see a traffic accident. You get the feeling of “But there for the grace of God go I,” and “Hey, my life’s pretty good!”

The first item on the stop was a bar in Chester that served lunch. The current special was goulash and green beans. Previous specials there have included tater tot hotdish (casserole), and drinks include Pepsi straight from the can. The reason we ate there, have eaten there, and will eat there in the future is because my coworker’s father-in-law or grandfather-in-law once owned the restaurant, so honoring the restaurant with our patronage is something of a point of pride. It must be interesting to have that kind of connection with a business. The closest I’ve ever come is seeing a line of Gottschalk’s department stores out west, before the company was liquidated. (I’m not making this up-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottschalks ) I should point out that whoever founded this line of department stores didn’t have any familial connection with me outside of the last name.

After lunch, we set out to explore the tornado’s path. There were a few areas that were notable enough to slow down and look—the house that had one wall completely gone was pretty interesting, and so was the barn that had collapsed due to the tornado. What really stood out for me, though, was that if you could get out and walk, tracing the tornado’s path would be easy. What is almost burned into my mind, though, are the copses of trees with paths cleared through them. It really accentuates how random and precise a tornado can be. I’ve seen movies and TV series where a giant laser carves a path through a city, doing all sorts of untold damage, and as I was looking at certain buildings collapsed while others ten feet away were untouched, some trees uprooted while others were untouched, I realized the capacity for a death ray already exists—and we’re breathing it.

Chinese Food and (Maybe) Breakfast

I had lunch with a co-worker today, which means we got to select between a couple of sit-down restaurants. When you do lunch in Cresco, your choices are kind of limited. Yes, there are a few places to eat, but when you factor in parking convenience, service and cost, you’re left with two places—Subway and the Chinese restaurant next door.

We decided to go to the Chinese place, since there’s a better chance for conversation, and personally Subway is my go-to restaurant when I get tired of bringing lunch in, so a change of pace was nice. It doesn’t hurt that it is probably the best Chinese restaurant in a couple of towns, and I include the Chinese buffets in Decorah. On a related note, there is more than one Chinese buffet in Decorah.

The Chinese place, Panda Garden, is kind of an anomaly in small towns. Most small towns I’ve been in favor the mom-and-pop restaurant, where the term “fancy dining” means they have pasta salad at the salad bar. Ethnic restaurants are not the norm. Panda Garden, though, seems to have done all right for itself.

Of course, being a small town there are a few concessions, such as the fact that the only Asian in the restaurant is the chef. Granted, if you’re Chinese restaurant is only going to have one Chinese person in it, the chef position is probably the way to go but it is somewhat strange to be greeted by a blonde waitress who says “Welcome to Panda Garden,” with a slight southern drawl.

Once you get over that little hurdle, the rest of the meal is great. They have some fantastic lunch specials for under $6, and you get a pretty decent portion of food for the price. I’m surprised the fast-food restaurants haven’t put a horse’s head in the owner’s bed yet.

As an added bonus, our meal was delivered by the chef himself, a man wearing an apron, a bar towel over his shoulder, and coming out of the kitchen with purpose. These entrees were going to be delivered, damn it, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The speakers played some soft, tranquil Chinese music, which I thought was slightly inappropriate. For that kind of walk, he should have had a heavy metal entrance theme, like White Zombie’s Electric Head Part 2. Still, he was polite as he gave us our meals, then strode back into the kitchen. Never have I been more convinced that a chef was going back in to do battle with his ingredients. You may joke about restaurants having to kill the animals to get the meat when the service is taking too long, but I would not be surprised if the chef  went back to the kitchen and immediately picked up a weapon that was one part chef’s knife, one part battle ax, and got to work.

Our lunch got me to thinking about another restaurant in town, one where I have never eaten. Not because I’ve heard bad things about it or because it’s out of the way. It’s just that the place is always closed. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure when it’s open. I know that it serves breakfast and lunch, but it closes at some vaguely-defined point after that, like around 1 p.m. or so. To be honest, I have never seen it open. I can’t even say with certainty that the place is ever open. It’s the Loch Ness Monster of restaurants.

What makes this café even weirder is that it has an immense parking lot. In the back lot behind this restaurant, there is a block that is solely for parking. About a third of this is public parking on a lot which was paved sometime back when Iowa was first settled. Then there is the next third, which is this restaurant’s parking lot. The final third is split between the pharmacy where I live, an apartment building next door, a bar and the VFW hall. Every day of the week two thirds of this parking lot are filled, and the parking lot that covers the pharmacy, apartments and bar is at least half-full all the time.

The café’s parking lot has, at maximum, two cars in it at any one time. The questions this raises are endless. The first is, why does the owner guard his parking lot so diligently? There are at least three “No Trespassing” signs on the property, and the owner let me know that if I ever parked there I would be towed off, in no uncertain terms. I can understand him not wanting me to park there if it meant he would lose customers, but I’m pretty sure the customers could find somewhere else to park, like right next to where I parked. At worst it would delay their entrance into the café by about three feet.

It’s not as though parking in Cresco is a rare commodity, either. When I was called out for parking on the owner’s lot, I drove the car forward five feet and parked on the public lot. I’ve already considered that the parking lot may be on top of an underground supper club, but I can’t get any confirmation or denial of this.

I think it may be a matter of principle. Let’s face it, in the Midwest, your home is your castle, and your property boundaries are sacred. It’s not such a stretch to imagine that this parking lot may be empty most of the time, and the restaurant may be closed most of the time, but it’s still the owner’s parking lot, darn it, and a man’s parking lot means something. It means that people are welcome to park there and wait for the restaurant to open, and it means that as long as that parking lot isn’t filled up with people who are going to get their prescriptions refilled or going across the alleyway to the bank or whatever, that restaurant is undeniably there. And I respect this.

Besides, it’s a nice view to have while I’m eating take-out stir fry.

Trains, Trains, and…Well, More Trains

Well, there is a definitely not a shortage of things to talk about. On Sunday, a tornado or two passed through the next town up, wreaking their fair share of havoc. So I was going to talk about that, but then I remembered I did promise to write about the train ride to Chicago, and it would be unfair if the only impression I left of the train was that it was TWO AND A HALF FREAKING HOURS LATE.

When the train actually arrived in La Crosse and I was able to board it, it turned out to be one of the nicest rides I’ve ever experienced. The seats were all comparable to those you see in the first-class sections of airplanes, provided they’re the larger airplane that takes you on a flight that lasts for at least an hour and a half. Two seats on either side of the aisle, with plenty of leg room. This is a must if you’re trying to get comfortable for a long trip, and I was more comfortable on the train than I usually am taking a plane. Five minutes later, we were moving.

Compared to airline travel, getting on a train is a very brief, even rushed. The typical station stop is about five minutes, and then the train leaves. Fortunately, I didn’t know how long I had, so when I was jogging toward one of the cars near the back it was not because I was worried the train would leave without me—I just wanted a good seat.

Actually, five minutes was plenty. Say what you will about the trains being late, but once they arrived they were the model of efficiency. It seemed incongruous to me that they could be so efficient, like a water buffalo sashaying into Carnegie Hall and performing Swan Lake, followed by some light tap dance.

After I’d gotten seated, the train began to move, and I was treated to a view of America most people don’t get to experience. Most of the rails have been designed to interfere with the highways and city traffic as little as possible, so most of the time you’re looking at the backs:  backs of businesses, backs of houses, backs of property lines and backs of the country side. Most of the time it’s a fascinating experience. Just outside of La Crosse I saw acres and acres of scrapped cars. Some were in good enough shape I originally thought it might be a storage lot for used cars, until I saw a light blue sedan with the front quarter of it crushed and twisted into a jagged nightmare of modern sculpture. Then I noticed the rust, the open hoods and the lack of doors and tires on models. There were so many cars that calling the area a car graveyard is much too vague. A necropolis is more accurate. Thousands of cars were arranged in a rough sort of order, and they stretched for acres. I could not imagine visiting the auto necropolis and being unable to find a usable part for any car made since the 1950s. I don’t know who owns the necropolis, but I’d like to imagine he loves cars and spends his nights walking down the rows, inspecting each chassis and refreshing his mental records of the models he has.

Another building that stood out was an old brick factory in Milwaukee that had several bright red wooden doors on its back that led out to small cement docks. I don’t know what the factory was, but I assumed they must have shipped a lot of product by rail. I wondered how much product the factory workers could load in five minutes and if it depended whether or not the employees were Teamsters.

Other interests included the back lots of gas stations, which all seemed to have the same emergency equipment in back: orange traffic cones, sandbags under a tarp, an emergency speed limit sign and a snow shovel. Now, the orange traffic cones I can understand. The emergency speed limit sign makes sense if a gas station owner is very concerned about someone not crashing into the store in bad weather. But the sandbags mystify me. So you can have two sandbags holding up the emergency speed limit signs, and if you’re paranoid I’ll give you four, but then what? Why would anyone need that many sandbags?

Anyway, there was also the lounge car. This car has much larger windows for observation, and seats that face the side. Some of them swivel for better conversation, not to mention better leg room, and there are small tables between them with metal rings where you can set your overpriced drinks, such as a $2 can of soda that does not, unfortunately, have gold flakes mixed in to justify its cost. It also serves beer, and on the way to Chicago I saw a young man in a camouflage t-shirt go into the lounge car empty handed and come out with a bottle of beer about seven times, looking happier and happier each time. Quite possibly the only person on the train whose smile was bigger was the person manning the drink counter.

I try not to be too political on this blog, but I really think that if the government were to pour in some money to train travel, they would have a gold mine on their hands. It’s cheaper than air fare, arguably more relaxing, and the scenery is mostly nicer. True, you don’t get the complimentary juice or soda, nor do you get the complimentary airline peanut, but you can take a snack aboard. If you ever get the chance to go Amtrak and you have a few hours to spare waiting, try it.