The problem with an outside-facing inside joke
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...from sea to shining sea.
But seriously, does anybody sing this song quite like Ray Charles sings it?
That is the closing line to America The Beautiful.
It concludes a hopeful invocation for connectedness and divine providence across the thousands of miles that stretch between the coasts our country.
At some point after the covered wagons traversed that distance and before we had a Route 66 on which to get our kicks, America connected those shining seas with a remarkable railway system. The first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, almost two decades before the invention of the automobile.
The pioneering spirit and the magnitude of the scale of that accomplishment have always left me in awe and wonder about trains. Trains amaze me. How did they get all that track laid, because, man, have you ever noticed how hard and heavy it is? Plus, it’s not like it’s assembled in two-foot lengths; sections seem to span forever! I read the Boxcar Children as a kid and even had a fairly substantial model railroad kit at one point in time. Trains amaze me.
Know what else amazes me?
Illegal, yep.
Defacing, check.
But the colors and artistic character renderings can be spectacular to behold, perhaps even more so given that they have to be created furtively. I’m doubly amazed when the medium for the graffiti is a train car!
I am quite sure that railroads do not appreciate spray paint all over their cars. Same can likely be said for stationary public spaces. But to me there’s a difference – a difference that leads to disappointment.
Graffiti on walls in subways and public parks and on the sides of warehouses is there in perpetuity, or until somebody finds a sandblaster. A bit of research reveals that a good portion of graffiti on immovable surfaces is done for the purposes of tagging. This involves the repeated use of symbols to mark territory.
But boxcars are peripatetic. In their lifetimes they will traverse and reverse across more than 160,000 miles of railway in the United States. From sea to shining sea. They are ‘hoodless – giant iron postcards in perpetual motion, with countless recipients across the undelivered years.
And who are these addressees? The kid who delights at a train magically travelling at the same speed and direction as the family car on the interstate route to a family vacation. The watch-checking commuter sipping her travelmug coffee on the forestalled route to work, whose day is unexpectedly brightened by a sudden splash of color and imagery chugging past. Forklift operators loading cargo on to boxcars.
Why not paint something on them that makes sense to someone besides yourself?
I get that their is an inherent cloak and dagger element of painting someone else’s property, and I’m pretty sure Hallmark isn’t market testing a line of graffiti greeting cards. But why spend three hours looking over your shoulder spraying paint just to send
Farblot Mendik
down the rails? Assuming that’s English, I don’t get it. In fairness, there are lots of things I don’t get (looking at your, Geico Gecko), but this just seems to be an intentional case of an outward facing inside joke. Why play Blind Man’s Bluff all by yourself? (Insert runaway train of thought quip here.)
What about the tree carving or wet cement model – “Cade loves Skylar”? Or a message-in-a-bottle approach with GPS coordinates to a secret stash of something? How about a riddle on one side of the boxcar and the answer on the other? A Mad Lib for people waiting at a crossing on a slow moving train?
There must be dozens of more interesting modes of messaging for graffiti on train cars. I’d love to hear your suggestions, as well as your experiences with graffitied ferroequus when your life travels have intersected with theirs. And in the less likely case you run in to a fella named Farblot Mendik, please let him know there’s a boxcar out there with his name on it.
Peace,
I’ve often wished for murals or other art forms. I agree, tagging with what appears to be nonsense may disguise the tagger, but it does seem a waste of obvious talent and well-traveled exposure.
Trains always remind me of 2 things. First, the delighted squeals of my firstborn from his car seat when we were stopped by a passing train. The energy and excitement when the guards began to flash their lights as they dropped to block the intersection. Then, fast forward over a decade to teaching that boy to drive. Equally piercing screams as he had to drive across those same tracks with a parked train sitting just to the left of where we were driving across. He’d scream with great drama until we were safely through, then cap off the experience with, “I HATED THAT!”
Thanks for the prompt to wander down memory lane. ❤️