Crazy Train

Arlington, Texas is the largest city in the United States without mass public transportation. It would be nice to be able to live in a city where that option is available but then there sometimes that I am glad that I don't.

The Summer season can get extremely hot and uncomfortable at times and cars may breakdown due to overheating. This is also the same time of year where more and more people will ride one of the very few forms of transportation near me. That, of course, is the TRE.

The TRE, or Trinity Railway Express, is a train that will only go from Downtown Fort Worth to Downtown Dallas with 7 stops in between. Every once in awhile, and only if someone is lucky enough, they will be graced with a complete crazy nut of a passenger like my train was earlier in the week.

It was a hot Monday afternoon and the only train cart with available seats was the one with the broken air conditioning. This should have been the first clue that this was not going to be an ordinary train ride.

As the TRE Enforcement when from cart to cart to check for valid tickets, they came across a man who didn't believe in purchasing a ticket or being quiet. I didn't hear the first part of the conversation between the no ticket guy and the TRE Enforcement Agent but I did hear the end of it.

From nowhere, I started to hear guy grunt as loud as he could like a wild boar being attacked by another wild boar. The man started to complain that he doesn't need to buy a ticket and became very hostile with everyone around him. At one point, the crazy man even started to get in the faces of his fellow passengers because they bought tickets and their fee should be enough to cover his cost.

This went on for almost 25 minutes. They guy just went nuts and didn't want to pay the 10 for the all day TRE pass. Numerous people tried to calm the disgruntled man down but nothing was stopping him. Not even the 2 TRE Ticket Enforcement Offices, the conductor of the train, or other fellow passengers could make this guy shut up for at least 1 minute.

At one point during the ride home, the conductor and the No Ticket Guy actually got in each other faces and started to yell at each other. As this was going on, people started to get out of their seats and sit somewhere else because of all the incoherent nonsense the guy was yelling at the female conductor.

When the stop before mine came, everything calmed down and became quiet. Everyone on the train, or at least from my point of view, assumed that the No Ticket Guy got off the train. We were way off on our judgement. The No Ticket Guy did two things that were extremely odd and creepy.

The first thing he did that was creepy was adjusting is bandanna. Originally, he was using the bandanna to wipe the sweat off of his head and face. After yelling at the conductor and calming down from a 10 to a 9.5 on the crazy scale, he adjusted the the bandanna over his face to resemble a cowboy who is about to rob a stagecoach filled with the mayor's money and daughter.

He would then point at people for a couple of seconds while staring at them with a blank face. This was obviously my clue to not look at this guy for the remainder of the trip.

He must have gotten tired because after he pointed at people for a couple of minutes, he gave up and just fell asleep on the a row of seats in the train. Apparently the Texas Heat and a small dose of crazy will have its toll on anyone.

I haven't seen No Ticket Guy on the train since, so I am thinking he either stopped using that form of transportation, got arrested at the final stop, or he just died of craziness. Either way, that was the craziest guy I have seen on any form of public transportation, and I have been to New York too.