Travels, but just barely, with Charlie

I have five dollars in my pocket as I walk into the South Station subway entrance to catch a Red Line train home from the city. I need to buy a ticket, or add money to my Charlie Card. Don't ask me how much the ride costs. But I am sure it is less than five dollars, and since I intend to use my credit card anyway, I approach the machines with what might be regarded, in retrospect, as a false sense of security.

I am face-to-face with a touch screen -- mano a mano; or perhaps mano a machino -- and things are not going well. I've put my Charlie Card in and out, added a nice round number of dollars to my card, found the place where the plastic credit card slides in, and followed the screen's orders. I slide, I withdraw. "Invalid card." I do this a few more times with the same result, the sequence culminating in the ever-informative, "Transaction canceled."

At this time, when I'm not at my best, I become aware of the old man a couple of machines over, suffering in his own contest with machines. "Excuse me," he says to a swirl of passersby, "do you know how these things work?"

He is my future.

OK, I think, as soon as I get my card topped off, I will pay attention to the befuddled gent. I perform my routine again. Same result: "Transaction canceled." I am talking to myself by now, rather loudly.

I try a second credit card machine. Same result.

The old man sidles closer. "Do you know how this works?"

"Apparently not."

He tells me he doesn't have his Charlie Card and would like to acquire a new one.

"Ah yes. Who wouldn't? But you can't do that here. These machines don't give you cards. They only give tickets."

Don't ask me why. I'm waiting for the Kingston Trio to launch their updated version of Charlie's travails on the MBTA. ("Charlie couldn't get on to that train!")

"Then I'll take a ticket," the old man replies.

"Do you have cash? The reason I ask is I can't get these machines to take a credit card."

He takes out his wallet, finds green.

"OK, let's do yours first. It's a touch screen. Ever used a touch screen?" I take his puzzled look for a no, and decide to do the touching. When I get to the amount, I look at the fare table, printed in tiny letters above the screen, because I can't remember the fare -- they keep changing it. The printed table says "one way $1.70."

"Where do you put the dollars?"

"Over here." He can't slide his bill into the fussy little slot, so I do it. The machine takes the first dollar, but it refuses to take the second one no matter how many times I feed it in, nor will it accept his replacement dollar, or the replacement dollar after that.

I take the $5 bill out of my wallet. "Let's see if it will take this."

Naturally it takes my five and officiously spits out a ticket. I pull out the ticket (because he can't see where it comes out) and hand it to him. I turn the ticket around, point out the orange arrow, and send him off to the turnstiles.

I then start back in on my ticket when I see the man walking back to me. "It says 'not enough value on ticket,' " he says.

AAARGH!

The small print reveals my mistake. On our newly automated fare system, there are two fares for the same ride. Any sentient being would choose the lower one, but you can't get that without a Charlie Card -- and you can't get a card at the station. For a ticket, you pay the higher fare, $2.

To appreciate the horror of what has transpired, realize that I have just now duplicated the mistake on my own ticket. I now have two expensively useless tickets, and no way to get either of us on a train.

"My mistake," I tell the old man. "I'll make you a new ticket."

His dollars don't work in the machine, so I put two dollar coins (change from my five) in. I take his worthless ticket from him in exchange, determined to find a T official to give me my $1.70 back, twice. Hugely major mistake.

"Thanks!" the old man calls. I sigh with relief.

OK, now another ticket for me. But wait a minute! I had five dollars! Deduct one-seventy for my worthless ticket. Deduct two dollars for the old man's good ticket -- in exchange for his worthless ticket, which I hope to redeem but that at the moment adds nothing to my net worth.

That leaves me with -- $1.30. Not enough to buy a ride home.

I walk back and forth, back and forth, trying to work out a solution. There are no T officials on the premises to provide help, a refund, advice, solicitude, a shoulder to cry on. I am about to walk across town to my wife's office to borrow her pass, when it occurs to me it will be quicker to find an ATM. Then, from somewhere in my troubled consciousness the recollection emerges that my Charlie Card, though lacking sufficient "value" to get me on the train, still has 80 cents on it, according to earlier reports.

Back to the machines. I put in $1.20. No problem, since I have all of $1.30.

I make it home with 10 cents to spare.

Robert Knox can be contacted at rc.knox@gmail.com.