Amtrak ride 'like a box of chocolates'

Remember Forrest Gump's famous line? "My momma always said, 'Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.'"

Amtrak journeys are a lot like that proverbial box of chocolates. You never know what kinds of interesting (or not) people you'll meet on the train. And when you spend 34 hours on the Empire Builder round trip, you're likely to come across a few characters.

Riding the train is nothing like flying. In my experience, 99 percent of plane passengers are content to pretend you don't exist or at the very least don't feel compelled to tell you their life stories. Not so on Amtrak.

There's something about traveling across the vast expanses of the Montana Hi-Line and prairies of North Dakota that prompts rumpled passengers, who in some cases have been riding the rails for days, to strike up conversations with complete strangers. It makes the time pass, and along the way you learn a few things about people and human nature.

On my way from Whitefish to Fargo two weeks ago, I went to the dining car for dinner and was placed alongside a mildly inebriated Alaskan fisherman of Finnish descent. In between swigs of his whiskey on the rocks, he regaled us with tales of commercial fishing in the Bristol Bay area.

He claimed he made $100,000 in just a few weeks some years, but after fishing Alaskan waters for more than 30 years, he said he didn't have much to show for all the money he'd made. And his wife didn't like him much any more, he added. The man shrugged and started drinking whiskey again.

Later that evening the conductor seated a man next to me who looked identical to one of my brothers. He even sounded like my brother. I felt like I was in some parallel universe. Turned out I knew his cousin, who was the youth pastor at the church we attended when we lived in Sidney.

The return trip to Whitefish, which started with a four-hour, middle-of-the-night wait at the Fargo train depot because Amtrak was running way late, was just as interesting.

"Welcome to our world," a middle-aged woman greeted me as I climbed into my seat. She was knitting an afghan and was a freelance children's story writer for Weekly Reader.

More interesting people turned up at dinner again.

When the two women sitting across from me found out I worked at a newspaper, they wondered if I was interested in investigating the potential dangers of fluoride in drinking water. (I graciously declined.) In their Northern Washington community, the town council had recently decided to fluoridate the water supply because fluoride has long been considered beneficial in preventing tooth decay.

But these women were adamant that their town consider a recent Scientific American article suggesting fluoride can be risky if it's overused. It was food for thought.

During another train meal, a woman from California insisted that her state was converting too much farmland to vineyards. That's just wrong, she maintained, because wine is an indulgence, and the land could be used to grow fruits and vegetables instead. Thank goodness I hadn't ordered a glass of wine with my meal.

Seems like I was surrounded by activists of one sort or another on this particular trip.

When my kids were young, we'd take Amtrak regularly to Minnesota to visit my family; it was the cheapest and most convenient way to travel. In recent years flying was quicker and usually reasonable enough to afford.

But with the price of plane tickets flying out of sight - the air fare from Kalispell to Fargo would have cost $600 more than my round-trip train ticket - I may be hopping on Amtrak more often.

I'll look forward to whatever's in the "box of chocolates," even if some of them are a little nutty.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com