"Joe Bracchitta, that's B-R-A-C-C-H..."

He used to be a musician, until he fell under the spell of disaster-recovery sales.

That’s why I love writing. Everybody, everywhere has a story. I regularly travel by train between Boston and New York, and there’s always someone interesting to talk to. In the past several months, I’ve met an executive who works for fun at a friend’s tree farm, a lawyer for a terrorist, and my all time favorite: the divorced lawyer and his ex-wife who were coming back from their daughter’s law school graduation. (The lawyer’s latest girlfriend was the same age as his daughter.)

Yesterday it was the disaster-recovery sales guy. If he had told me what he did first off, he might have had a sale. If I could use anything, it would be disaster-recovery insurance. Unfortunately, they don’t offer that to writers, for good reason. But I digress.

He told me the company in first class was generally boring—mostly business people and sales people (and people like me who get bonus upgrades) talking about their kids and “shallow stuff.” Joe clearly doesn’t like pools and golf courses. What he does like is cooking. He learned technique from his mother, but not recipes. He says if you ask his mother for a recipe, the first ingredient is always a big sigh. He cooks the same way—off the cuff, not full of sighs. One gets the impression that his family recipes are full of laughs and smiles, not sighs, the best kind of cooking.

He describes himself as being a Guinea ADD-type of from Yonkers. He got off in New Haven, so I guess you can take the guy out of Yonkers, but you can’t take the Yonkers out of the guy.

Joe and his wife, Lori, recently went on vacation to Italy, a small town outside Rome, to visit family. He said he could have sat the whole time—either watching the world pass by or just watching the world (nature is a wonderful thing if you can find it.) And, guess what? That’s exactly how he spent his vacation. He claimed he wasn’t exaggerating, his wife had to go back to Italy, with his mother, to see the sights. (They left Joe at home.)

As a final note, or coda if you will, Joe and I have an understanding. Even though he ’fessed up to being on the phone with his lawyer while we were on the train, he won’t sue me because I warned him I would be writing this after a couple of glasses of wine. He said he understood, writers being tortured souls and all that. As for Lori, well…hopefully she’s as understanding (and doesn’t have a lawyer on speed dial). Again, the reason why a writer never qualifies for disaster-recovery insurance, but should probably have a disaster-recovery plan…

My all-time favorite train story

I ride the Acela back and forth to New York every week. It’s always pretty much the same: The morning train is pretty relaxed, mostly business travelers, the evening train, the last one of the day, is always crowded.

Now, before I tell this story, let me just say that it doesn’t mean that I advocate what this guy did, but I appreciate the humor of the situation (especially since I was just a casual observer).

I was sitting in an aisle seat one night and just happened to notice this guy sitting a row or two up. He borrowed the cellphone of the man next to him and called home. It was the same refrain of most of these types of conversations, “Darling, I’ll be home soon.” No big deal.

About ten minutes later, he had a seizure. Everyone, of course, reacted. Someone got the conductor, who called over the loudspeaker for any doctor on board to come immediately. They called ahead to get an ambulance at the next available stop. Two doctors came, but since they didn’t really know anything about him they couldn’t be sure if it was a seizure or not. The man was either sleeping (as one does after a seizure) or was unconscious. His seatmate remembered the phone conversation, so one of the doctors redialed the number.

He talked to the man’s wife and explained the situation and told her not to worry, etc. She filled him in on his medical history, and they told her what station they were going to get to and that they would get her the hospital information.

Finally, the man woke up. He was still groggy, and they explained everything to him, including the phone call. They said he’d be fine. He said no, he most certainly would not be fine. As it turned out, his wife didn’t know he was on the train.

By then we were in the next station. He wanted nothing to do with the ambulance. They, of course, insisted that he at least let the EMT’s check him out. After awhile, he came back and the train left.

He explained to his seatmate that he and his wife had been having problems and that he was seeing someone in New York. He had told his wife that he was going somewhere else locally for the day. He then borrowed the phone again.

This conversation was a lot different and far from routine. He told his wife that he wasn’t on the train, that he had been driving by a train station when he felt the seizure come on and pulled into the station just as a train was arriving. What a lucky coincidence. That the doctor who called her was confused and thought he was a passenger on the train. (I hope for the sake of women everywhere that this woman did not believe this story.) She, of course, insisted on coming to pick him up because surely he couldn’t drive the rest of the way home. Of course, he had to refuse, because while his car was at the station, he wasn’t there yet. At some point she did hang up on him. Several times, in fact.

I don’t know what the lessons here are. Of course, there are the obvious ones. In addition to that, I guess, make sure you have a clean bill of health before you embark on a mission of folly, and if you are going to do something questionable or even stupid (who am I to judge), at least get a story out of it. Granted, this guy wasn’t laughing that night, but hopefully after he picked up the pieces and sorted out what was important, he appreciated the humor of the situation. Because sometimes, that’s all we got.