Civilized Behavior

Written on Saturday, October 25.
Edited on Sunday, October 26.

Grandma used to be afraid of the cold trains
in Chicago, the Skokie Lokey line she calls it, way
back twenty-five years ago, in a world I hardly know,
with all of that horribly uncivilized behavior.
It’s a shocking discovery, bitters my tongue.

“I just don’t understand how it all happened,”
she says, and then later: “I’m sorry Greg, but all
the uncivilized people I ever encountered were black.”
A distinct 21st century hesitancy rests in both of us.
I think about her stories of these gamblers, these

businessmen, and what they mean today.
I wonder what she would think about the
train-ride home from Center City, about
the bootleggers and drug dealers, about
all the desperation. I wish I could tell her

if you do not mess with them they do not
mess with you. But if I told her, she would
not listen, she would only fear, but then again
fear is good. It is what grandmothers do.
It is what I should do too, more often, instead

of my constant glorification of the dirty train rides,
which some people will and some people will
not mind, get disturbed by, for years down the
road. After ending the call with Grandma,
I open a copy of the Revolution newspaper and

exchange greetings with the other train
riders, generally happy, completely devoid of
racial distinctions, devoid of any factors of danger,
and I think about all the past, and how maybe it was
kind of uncivilized, or maybe it was merely on fire.