choo-co-cheap-aholics

In Leçon 24 of French in Action, Robert, l'Américain un peu naïf, wonders whether the train always arrives on time in France.

Mireille, la jeune Française sage, replies: "Évidemment, les trains sont toujours à l'heure. En France, les trains sont très ponctuels. Ils partent exactement à l'heure, et ils arrivent exactement à l'heure."

I thought of this last summer when Dad considered taking Amtrak from Simi Valley, home of Soviet style Ronald Reagan shrine, to catch a plane flying out of San Diego the same day.
"Dad, rent a car," I said. "This isn't France."
I could hear him grimace.

Reaganites like Dad gorged on the anti-effetist mythology of monster government pickpocketing hard worker Joe America to destroy private enterprising efficiency. Of course, under private enterprise U.S. passenger rail quite efficiently went to rot by the 1950s while Europeans taxed and spent their way to rail rider Valrhona 70% dark.

So when Parade middle America Sunday milquetoast magazine asks: "Will rail travel resurge?" Our answer: we prefer Hershey's, "The Great American Cardboard Bar!"