I happen to know of a fellow named Gary who works downtown. Gary’s an international derivatives arbitrager or something like that. I don’t fully understand what he does. But phone him at work and you can almost hear the starch in his dress shirt rustle as he tells you to call him back after the market has closed.
Well, Gary recently began having trouble with his morning commute to work. He used to catch a 5:45 DART train at the Park Lane station, which was the northern terminus of the Red Line. But six new stops sprung up along DART’s stolon into Richardson, so all the seats on Gary’s train were filling up by the time it reached Park. This presented a problem for a man like Gary. Reading the Wall Street Journal while standing on a moving train requires wrapping oneself around a metal pole like an exotic dancer, a maneuver he felt was beneath his station in life (and above his skill level). Now he rises even earlier to catch a train at around 5:30.
This made me wonder: who, exactly, are these go-getting Richardsonians who are beating Gary to the train? Also, now that DART has fallen about $80 million short of its projected revenue, could it pick up some extra cash by converting one car of every train into a “stripper car,” with White Snake playing on the PA and ladies doing a little tasteful pole dancing? The latter question is probably better explored in another forum. But the former, the one about the go-getters, I resolved to answer. And because I felt sorry for them, I decided to bring free donuts.
Thus did I find myself the other morning, with two boxes containing three dozen assorted donuts, boarding the 5:17 train at the Galatyn Park station. The 5:17 is the first train into Dallas. Why the 5:17 is the 5:17 and not, say, the 5:15 remains a mystery. I asked the conductor, who was having a pre-departure chat with one of the three passengers in the lead car. He looked at his watch and said, “That’s the schedule, man.”
Then I offered him a free donut. At first he declined, pointing to a “no eating” sign with a red slash-circle over sundry comestibles.
“Come on,” I said, producing napkins. “All rules are off on the first train. It’s not even 5:17, man. Plus, that sign has pictures of a snow cone, a hamburger, and a soda. What we have here are free donuts.”
That’s all it took. Following the conductor’s lead, two of the passengers helped themselves. I asked one of them, a mustachioed chap in a gimme cap, what business brought him to the first train.
“I work in the Energy Plaza downtown,” he said. “I’m actually already running late.”
The third passenger, though, appeared to speak neither English nor the universal language of fat-fried cake. He avoided eye contact and just shook his head at the free donuts.
That was pretty typical of the reception I received as we headed south and, as new passengers embarked, I tried to give them donuts. One guy in an Austin 3:16 t-shirt simply said, “I’m diabetic.” A woman seated across from him, wearing white sneakers with a red dress, said,”I’m diabetic, too.” Another good excuse I got was: “Naw, donuts don’t taste as good without coffee.”
As it turned out, folks who take the first train to Dallas aren’t too terribly interested in talking at that hour. Or they’re not interested in talking at that hour to a guy who’s trying to give them free donuts. I gathered, though, that these generally are not Journal-reading Type A captains of industry like Gary. Instead of pressed white dress shirts, many wear polyester uniform shirts with sewn-on name patches. They are hardworking, early rising folk. Diabetic folk.
By the time the train reached the Lovers Lane station, at 5:36, it was packed with people who just wanted a few minutes of sleep, their eyes shut and heads lolling—except for one guy in the lead car who rode rather conspicuously with almost three dozen donuts in his lap.
