That roadtrip with my older brother was probably a bad idea
I can’t remember what year it was. Maybe 2012? Or maybe it was 2011. I was living in Atlanta at the time and for the first time since I was a damn high school senior two related events occurred:
I was poor as hell — I had recently quit a very comfortable, well paying job to start my own company with next to nothing in my bank account.
I was newly single — I mean, divorces ain’t cheap amiright?
Christmas approached. Normally I’d spend the holiday with my ex’s family OR fly home to Houston where I’m from. Given my new reality of being cash strapped, I decided to drive home to Houston. No big deal! I’d done the drive about a half dozen times. It’s an 860 mile, 12 hours (ish) drive that is remarkably boring, extremely difficult on your suspension (I’m looking at you Louisiana), and slightly terrifying when you’re in East Texas (everything is terrifying when you’re in a base model Honda Civic and everything that whizzes past you is farm grade pickup truck going 90 miles an hour).
For reasons that I still cannot wrap my head around, I asked my older brother Chris if he wanted to ride with me. I could dedicate an entire book to my brother Chris. 11 years older than me and by some biological freak accident, we come from the same parents despite being as different as two human beings can possibly be. As soon as the offer to ride with me tumbled out of my mouth, I felt an immediate sense of “oh shit, what have I done”. Chris wasted no time in his response. “YES! Yes I will ride with you!” I think he saw a future where I would buy him as many cheeseburgers as he could eat while I did all the driving. Which is exactly what happened. But he also shared with me one of my all time favorite stories about his improbable life.
We were somewhere west of Lakes Charles, Louisiana, about 9 hours into the drive, when Chris casually said “that’s where I got stuck on a freight train”.
Normally I ignore what comes out of my brother’s mouth the first time he utters something. Usually because it’s some kind of weird sequitur or an extremely random baseball stat from the 70s. But “getting stuck on a freight train” sounded like the kind of story I wanted to hear. NEEDED to hear. So I gripped the wheel and said “uh, what?”
Years before, Chris had lived in Beaumont, Texas. He worked at a Mexican restaurant as a waiter, the kind of job he held off and on since, like forever ago (and the kind of job he likely still has today). After working a night shift, Chris did as many wait job folks do after work: he went out drinking. I didn’t really get from Chris what he was drinking or with whom or where he was because, honestly, that part of the story is pretty pedestrian. It’s what he did after that is so great (or terrible depending on your point of view).
He left the bar at 2 or 3 am not entirely sure how to get home. Across the street was a bland looking office park. “I’ll just sleep there” he told himself. He stumbled over to the office park, found some comfortable pine mulch, laid down, and fell asleep. ‘Who hasn’t passed out in an office park!” I tell Chris at this point, trying to relate to my older brother despite the fact that I’ve never actually passed out in an office park.
After sleeping for 30 minutes? An hour? Who the hell knows, a security officer jostles Chris awake. “You can’t sleep here”. Chris stumbles to his feet wondering how he’ll get home. He burned through most of his tips from the evening on booze and Golden Tee so he wasn’t exactly equipped to get a cab. Chris started stumbling around as tired drunk people do. He noticed a freight train on the tracks not far from the office park he was at.
“There’s a rail line right near my house” Chris thought to himself.
It probably doesn’t take a Thomas the Train scholar to guess what happens next. Chris climbed into one of the empty freight cars anticipating a speedy, not-so-comfortable trip to his apartment. But two things happened:
Chris accidentally got on an west-to-east line when he really needed to get on a north-to-south line
He passed out in the train car
This entire story is being related to me as we pass by the train yard outside of Lake Charles where Chris woke up sometime the next morning. The train was still, parked in the yard as trains often do when they’re being unloaded / rerouted / whatever.
“HOLY SHIT DUDE ARE YOU SERIOUS” I ask him. The idea of this happening to me would be terrifying. You wake up, not knowing where you are, or when you are (“how long were you asleep!” “beats me man”). Chris just sorta chuckled when I asked him if he was serious.
“So what did you do?” He then proceeds to tell me how he stumbled out of the rail car, again not knowing where (or when) he is. He quickly realizes it’s the next morning and after walking a bit to I-10 that he’s in Lake Charles, about 60 miles from where he lives.
“HOLY SHIT DUDE ARE YOU SERIOUS!!” I again ask him. “Yeah, the train was confusing when I got on it”. Chris’s ability to reframe his clear mistakes as the mistakes of others was truly a gift. We continued down I-10 for a few minutes when he said “I think that’s where someone picked me up and drove me to my apartment”.
We would drive the last few hours on our way to Houston with me probing each point of this story to make sure I fully understood it.