Trem do Forro Adventure

I had reservations on the train, along with my wife, her mother and her husband, for Saturday, June 20, 1998, the last train before São João on the twenty-fourth. I awoke to the commotion caused by one of Recife's torrential thunderstorms that had flooded the street below and was filling up the garage under the building. June is rainy season along the northeastern coast, and although rain fell several times per week, the storms were short-lived. The accumulation of water in the garage had rendered the elevators useless, producing general chaos throughout the building. Tenants scrambled down the dark rear staircase, normally reserved for empregadas (domestic servants), to rescue their vehicles from the rising water. The building rumbled from the heavy traffic running up and down. I watched from a fourth floor window as the heavy gray sky hung there, feathery, and soaked the neighborhood of Boa Viagem. Voices echoed from adjacent

buildings. Below a lake formed and mud rolled freely from an enjoyably silent construction site across the street. A man stood up to his knees in the dirty water and cursed the litter floating on its surface as the culprit that clogged the street drain. Another swore that the dirt from the ongoing construction was to blame. They worked with sticks to free the clog from the drain openings as the rains continued to fall. It all looked rather ominous and threatened to disrupt our planned excursion. The cross streets, like the one below, ran east to west and were totally flooded, but the main avenues running north and south were still passable.

Braving it all, we decided to persevere and exited the building. Carrying our shoes, we hiked up our trousers and waded to the corner to hail a taxi to Estação de Cincos Pontas (Five Points Station) where trem do forró was waiting. I liked the rain. It had cleared the air of its usual burning sugar

cane, palm leaves and auto exhaust smell, and had reduced the usually scorching temperatures of Recife to my comfort zone. It was fun to watch the city scramble under the torrent. Upon our arrival at the station, the sky was already clearing and, as is typical in Recife, within an hour there would be little sign that it had ever rained at all. We jumped from the taxi and donned our trem do forró t-shirts as we waited anxiously to board. Everyone had an assigned car, or vagão, in which to arrasta-pé (dance forró). Although you were free to roam about the train, this was considered your home base for the next six to seven hours. Ours was vagão four, the center of the seven-car train. Its faded blue and silver paint gleamed from the glaze left by the morning storm, and the paper banners

and festive banderoles clung lifelessly to its sides. As we walked out onto the platform, I could hear the music emanating from the trios already busy playing inside the cars. I basked in the sight of trem do forró. "Finalmente," (finally) I said to myself, "o arraial-móvel" (The arraial-móvel, mobile hamlet, was the description used in the media propaganda for the train). The old train that I had heard so much about now stood before me, and I took a moment to daydream.

The old cars were not very large, capable of accommodating perhaps fifty people, but judging from the sight of all the purple sleeves moving through the turnstiles, there would be far more. I looked into our car. The trio of zabumba, sanfona, and triangle, was straight ahead, against the locked doors in the opposite wall. They wore pink straw hats that matched the polka dots in their sky blue shirts. They appeared comical, and satirical which was in sharp contrast to their adherence to the traditional pé da serra style of forró they were delivering. Wooden benches lined the walls of the car facing inward. The center was reserved for dancing and moving about. It became clear that the majority of us would occupy the center of the car dangling from the handrails in the ceiling. In the front corner of the car, cases of beer and coolers were stacked into an improvised bar where revelers could purchase beer and

cheese sandwiches along the way. Colorful paper banderoles of blue, red, green, white and yellow hung from the ceiling in the tradition of São João. The sights, the smells, and the sounds excited my senses as the festive passengers hurried aboard to the last call of the train's whistle. The car rapidly filled up beyond capacity and the incoming wave crowded the trio up against the wall.

The drinking and dancing had already begun! The car rocked and bounced as seventy or more people danced forró. The morning sun had gradually turned the rain's refreshment into a hot and humid sauna. The temperature inside the metal cars was considerably higher than outside, like a can of sardines in the sun, and I caught myself wondering if I were forrozeiro enough to endure the lengthy trip. Assuring myself that I was, I claimed the space to the right of the trio where I intended to spend the next seven hours hanging on and dancing forró. With a sudden jerk, the train groaned and creaked as it made its way out of the station. The sanfona wheezed as the passengers roared "Viva São João!" Trem do Forró '98 was underway!

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