On the “El”
Riding the “El” (New Yorkers would call it the subway, but this was Chicago), the ride into the city from O’Hare airport is about an hour. (It can easily be longer by car.) About halfway, hunger was felt; I dug through my pack to find my energy bar. My fingers had also stumbled upon a napkin. With these on my lap, poised to work open the plastic wrapping, I heard the announcement, loud and clear. I heard: “No Smoking, no littering, and no eating on the train.” For a moment I thought: Big Brother Is Watching You.
The car was close to full but no one was standing. I looked at my fellow passengers. Not one of them was eating. None were smoking either—and I didn’t see even a coffee cup. I noticed the floor was free of litter.
I put the bar back in my pack.
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Many years ago a fellow priest in New York had told me about being in Germany. Although the light was red, she saw there was no traffic at that moment and proceeded, as we all would do in New York, to walk across the street. A woman’s voice rang out loudly across the street: “Child-killer!” she shouted (in German).
My fellow priest explained that to Germans, following rules is fundamental to communal life. By crossing during a red light she was, potentially, encouraging a child to do the same, a child who would not be able to make the intelligent discrimination of when it was safe to break the rule and when it was not. All rules should be followed, for the sake of everyone—this was the underlying conviction.
She never did it again (until she came to New York).
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There was no life at stake, but I did appreciate the cleanliness and order of that car on the El in Chicago. About thirty minutes later, now walking a downtown street, I opened and enjoyed the energy bar.
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Out & About: For your calendars in Dallas: The Good Books & Good Talk seminars this fall will be on Sundays, Sept. 14, Oct. 19, and Nov. 9; the books are, in order, A Time to Die by Nicolas Diat, Dr. Wortle’s School by Anthony Trollope, and Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot. Each seminar is at 5 p.m. at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, whose history is thankfully less bloody than that of Canterbury’s.
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Postscript. Two days later in Chicago I heard the same announcement, but this time it seemed to be, “No Smoking or Eating and Littering.” I thought: maybe it’s not eating that’s forbidden but “eating and littering.” Then of course I realized that the meaning of an oral loudspeaker announcement was not going to hang on little copulative words.