Excerpt from "OFF THE RECORD"

The Phantom Railroad

by Bruce Anderson

ANOTHER $12 MIL down the Eel River Canyon, a press release re-write courtesy of the Anderson Valley Advertiser: "Congressman Mike Thompson (D-R North Coast) announced on Friday that Congress has pork barreled a major transportation bill, which includes $12 million in pure lard for the North Coast Railroad Authority, a jobs program for loyal but otherwise unemployable Democrats. Congressman Thompson shores up his Humboldt County base by pretending that trains will again serve Eureka and its empty deep water port, the collapsed Eel River Canyon notwithstanding. Additionally, NCRA Executive Director Mitch Stogner, former aide de camp to Doug Bosco, Barry Keene and other North Coast Democrat Party luminaries, and the latest political appointee to sit in the railroad's director's chair, explained that Thompson also inserted language into the bill that requires the Federal Highway Administration to 'obligate' to the NCRA $8.6 million that it has been holding since 1995. In this way, Thompson continues to both employ the party's Stogner types and delude Eureka's dimmer business people that rail service will again link Eureka's ship-free port with industry-free Marin County. In other words, a re-established rail line between San Rafael and Blue Lake will be available to carry goods from ships containing nothing that don't stop in Eureka to points south where there are no customers for the goods even if they existed and the railroad managed to make its way through the Canyon's mile-long mud slides and collapsed tunnels."

STOGNER, installed in his present job despite having no experience in railroading and solely because he has spent his sad working life in the employ of major enemies of the people, said Thompson has been "extremely helpful" in shifting a hunk of non-existent money from one phantom account to an apocryphal other.

"REOPENING the railroad," the blandly corrupt Thompson's press release continued to lie, "will help bring jobs and economic viability to our local North Coast communities which have been hit hard lately. The railroad will allow greater access to freight coming in through the Port of Eureka. Moreover, it will reduce the truck traffic on Highway 101, saving approximately $2 million annually in highway repairs."

PURE BULLSHIT, of course, because there is no freight of any consequence arriving at the Port of Eureka except, perhaps, opium by products which don't require deepwater ports to off load. There is zero potential for any kind of trans-oceanic markets out of Eureka's rusty port other than, again perhaps, pink pastel geriatric human tourist traffic because existing sea trade is conducted at existing modern port facilities situated in large cities to the north and south of Eureka where they serve huge urban populations. The Eureka port was viable when there were trees and sawdust to export. The trees and the sawdust are gone, as is Eureka as a port except, perhaps, for pink pastel tourist traffic who might want to get off the boat in Eureka and take some kind of train trip south. Which assumes a $600 million-plus investment to restore the track on a single stretch of rail line running through the Eel River Canyon, and that money is now forever unavailable because Bush-Kerry say we will be in Iraq until it's a democracy, i.e., forever. Moreover, as anybody who has hiked the area can tell you, there are massive slides presently covering the tracks in several area east of Spy Rock and the longest tunnel out of Dos Rios requires major shoring up, as do the other tunnels on the line, some of which, as I recall, have been on fire for several years.

STOGNER, glossing over the hodgepodge of county agencies whose pudgy, grasping and obstructing fingers must somehow find agreement and talk their rightly skeptical publics out of large sums of public cash to pay for rail leadership of the Thompson-Stogner variety just to get the trains running between Healdsburg and Hopland, one of the only stretches of negotiable track between Tiburon and Willits, declared confidently, "It's a most beautiful stretch of railroad; it would be very attractive for someone to operate an excursion service from Healdsburg to Willits." Yes, it would, Mitch honey, but that private someone would have to have a major hole in his head to attempt it while the entire length of the line is dominated by career officeholders and their Sonoma, Marin, Mendo, and Humboldt County counterparts, each with his own little stretch of tracks.

WHAT WE NEED in this country is task-specific czars with absolute authority, including powers of summary execution, to carry out not only rail restoration and other socially beneficial projects. LA gave that authority, without powers of summary execution, to a private contractor in the wake of the big earthquake that collapsed several freeways. LA couldn't wait for Caltrans and other tax-fed ditherers to get the job done because LA knew the freeway would remain down for the lives of all living Americans if the job were left to Caltrans and the Thompsons and the Stogners. Similarly, no train will ever again appear on a regular basis on the ghostly tracks between Marin and Dos Rios, let alone Marin and Eureka, so long as Democrats (or Republicans) control the tracks. Why even Cloverdale, the Northcoast's most optimistic community, no longer keeps the clock running on its perennially anticipatory railroad station, built ten years ago on the deluded assumption that the Democrats would soon come chugging up the tracks in a celebratory train. For years the clock on the Cloverdale Train Station was kept right on time, but no train has appeared on the tracks. Cloverdale has packed up its red, white and blue bunting, its train station clock has run down, its waiting room has never seen a passenger, barn swallows have nested in its rafters, and bums sun bathe on the tracks.