A seatmate named Stan

Oct. 8, 2008

WHERE I AM: Nebraska. Riding California Zephyr train no. 6.
WHAT I DID TODAY: Rode the rails. Met lots of neat people, including a man named James who is a retired Associated Press photographer. We talked newspapers, travels, baseball. He shoots photos of spring training and freelances them each year to make money to travel.
WHAT I’M DRINKING: Water.
WHERE I’M GOING TOMORROW: Through Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts.

It is 7 in the morning. I am watching the world wake up from the window of my train in Lincoln, Nebraska. The corn stalks are spent. Dried husks, slightly translucent, ripple gold in the sunlight like God is throwing a blanket over the world.

My seatmate is a 78-year-old man named Stanley Garland. He’s got a good story:

It took 20 minutes, but he did it. He’d been on the train for two days. All he wanted was to lie down.
First Stanley Garland, 78, rolled onto his side, facing the window. Then he slid onto his knees and rested that way for several minutes. He looked like a man in prayer. Maybe he was.
Next Garland slid his feet under the seat in front of me and lowered his head onto the edge of his seat. He was stuck. There was no going back now.
Shuffle, shuffle, wiggle, wiggle. He curled his legs and eventually got his head and shoulders jammed under his seat.
“I did it,” he said, muffled by the seat above his head. “I did it.”

Garland is a widower. Six years now, he’s been alone. But the twelve years he had with his second wife were worth chasing her to Yugoslavia.
He asked Veronica to marry him when she was in America on a 6-month visa. She said no. If he wanted her, he’d have to find her across the ocean.
“I don’t think she thought I would actually come,” he said.
They dated across the ocean. He brought her back to America and taught her English. Then he brought her kids over, and their kids, 10 in all.
She learned how to play Bingo and how to keep her winnings rather than gamble them away again. Once she won $2,500 and told the owner of the Bingo hall, in her broken accent, there was no way the hall would get that money back, Garland said. She used it to buy two visas and two plane tickets to bring her daughters to her side.
Garland and Veronica continued to date. He cared for her kids.
Then one day, with little pomp and lots of practicality, Garland took Veronica’s hand. “If we’re gonna do this, let’s do it now.”
He pulled a ring from his pocket, slipped it on her finger and led her to the courthouse. They were married that day, and loved each other to the end.