“This is the 6:05 Worcester Express,” the conductor announced this evening as the train jerked out of South Station.
The woman seated next to me bucked in alarm. “I thought this was the ‘War-chester’ train,” she yelped, moving as if to disembark the moving train like some sort of action hero instead of a tiny, clean woman in her sixties with a hulking floral-patterned suitcase.
A nearby man called “Yeah, this is the ‘Woos-ter’ train.”
This did little to alleviate her restless concern, and in fact charged the situation with chaotic Abbott and Costello confusion. “This is the right train,” I assured her. “It’s not pronounced ‘War-chester.’ It’s ‘Woos-ter.'”
She looked at me blankly, then relaxed. “Well, I didn’t know that,” she said. “I’ve never heard it said like that before.” She then proceded to tell me all about how she’s going to Grafton to housesit for a nephew with two dogs while he’s in California for a month.
“And where are you from?” I asked, pegging her as total southern Midwest.
“Ohio,” she said. Ah, I should have known. Sensible-to-the-point-of-stupid Ohio.
