Cam Thompson

The Coordinates

The train was empty. Well, partially empty. My old friend Zeke was sitting in the last car, last row, and the seat next to the conductor booth. I didn’t have to be back there, I just knew. He took this ride each and every day. Him and the glass bottle in the paper bag. When I first met Zeke, I had had a rough day. I missed my first train and was stuck at 30th Street for an hour for some sort of electrical outage. He was sitting on the bench under the War Memorials angel. I walked by, grabbed a coffee and the paper, and circled back to sit. Zeke never looked up, took a swig from his bottle, and said, “I have to get home”. “Yeah, me and you both my friend”. I did not even care to look at the time at this point. My buddies were already on the Broad Street Line headed for the park. To me, this was a night in, and after teaching 3 classes today – my only plans were to grab a Yuengling, leftovers from the fridge, and catch the last few innings of the game. I stopped buying season tickets a while ago but catching a game or two after work was a pastime. When I was a kid, my dad took me to every game. We could only get standing room only tickets most of the time, but who cared. As a kid, what difference did it make? I would stand outside with my glove and bat for hours on a Saturday. I only came in for meals and right before the streetlights came on. We all thought we would be ‘Dutch’ one day. Yeah…