{"id":1140,"date":"2019-06-01T01:41:28","date_gmt":"2019-06-01T01:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/?p=1140"},"modified":"2019-05-01T02:44:46","modified_gmt":"2019-05-01T02:44:46","slug":"1140","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/2019\/06\/01\/1140\/","title":{"rendered":"Riding the Rolling Rain Forest by James Barr"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jim survived decades as a creative director and writer at two renowned U.S. advertising agencies. He’s now enjoying life as a freelance writer and has a special on Tuesdays, where he offers 50% off on nouns and all words beginning with “Q.” <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Riding the Rolling Rain Forest<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riding Chicago\u2019s elevated commuter train (the \u201cel\u201d) back in\nthe \u201860s was more than a ride to work and home again. Back in the Primeval Era,\nyou had to be made of special stuff to survive this rolling rain forest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riding the el on a sweltering August day was a near\nclaustrophobic experience. And the further you rode in this heat-encased steel chamber,\nthe hotter and more humid it became. Before long, an entire weather system\nformed inside. Low-lying clouds stretched from one end to the other. Once, I\nthought I saw a flamboyance of flamingoes pass through. But I may have been suffering\nfrom heat delusions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At each stop, new people crowded aboard and soon the aisles filled\nand the windows steamed up, further enhancing that closed-in feeling. Right on\ncue, the summer rainstorm would begin and each new arrival boarded drenched.\nOne gentleman stood before me in his stylish Burberry raincoat and jaunty\nbrimmed hat. I was reading a newspaper, trying to avoid eye contact with these apparent\nflood survivors. As the gentleman leaned down to see the Cubs score in my paper,\na river of rain streamed from his brim, formed a tributary that ran down me,\nonto my paper, down my leg, onto my Gold Toe socks and ultimately created a\nsmall lagoon in my Florsheims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The el that ran through my hometown of Evanston had a\nspecial kind of torture. The woven straw seats had seen better days. Perhaps\nfirst woven from Nile reeds by Egyptian basket makers, the cane on these seats\nwas breaking apart and had many sharp ends. Slide onto a seat and you could\nfind yourself suddenly lanced by an angry cane end. To remove it, you had to\nslowly slide back the way you came. In today\u2019s terms, this movement was kind of\na slow motion seated twerk. To suddenly stand meant that your pants got ripped,\nthe pain intensified and you were left with an unwanted cane implant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I always felt sorry for out of town visitors or first-time\nriders listening carefully for their stop to be announced. The speakers for the\ntrain\u2019s public address system were so ancient, it became an aural impossibility\nto correctly hear a simple announcement about an upcoming stop. \u201cLoyola and\nSheridan\u201d became \u201cRoyalaaaa and\nChadwinnnn<\/em>.\u201d \u201cHoward, end of the line\u201d was garbled into \u201cAllward, Bend Your Mind<\/em>.\u201d Whoever was on\nthe mike sounded as though he\u2019d been chloroformed and the rag stuffed in his\nmouth for safekeeping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s el riders probably ride in cushy comfort with Wi-Fi\naccess, a special designer coffee car and Bluetooth announcements you can\nactually understand. They\u2019ll never know what we endured back in the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And they\u2019ll never know about the survival skills and adroit\nmoves once needed to successfully step through all those flamingo droppings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim survived decades as a creative director and writer at two renowned U.S. advertising agencies. He’s now enjoying life as a freelance writer and has a special on Tuesdays, where he offers 50% off on nouns and all words beginning with “Q.” Riding the Rolling Rain Forest Riding Chicago\u2019s elevated commuter train (the \u201cel\u201d) back … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sa867U-1140","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1140"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1144,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions\/1144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}