A mtrak is a funny word that all too often is used as a punchline. The redheaded stepchild of American transportation. But as a redhead myself, I love the runty Little Engine That Could. I love an underdog, and Amtrak is the true underdog of getting around.

After I did my audition for Saturday Night Live and it was time to go home to Nashville, I took Amtrak. I bought a coach-class ticket to Birmingham, Alabama, 25 hours from New York. Don’t do that. Get a private room on overnights. I can’t stress that enough. Anyway, on the train, I got a call from Lorne Michaels telling me I’d gotten the job. He asked where I was, and I said, “I’m on an Amtrak to Birmingham.” And he said, “Oh, what a glamorous life you lead.” Looking at the passing forests, backyards, swamps, rivers, and valleys, I couldn’t agree with him more.

Trains bring us together. We’re all coughing and sneezing and reading in the same little room. This is communion, this is church. We gather with strangers across age and economic lines, a vital American experience in an increasingly isolated age.

This form of travel, unlike all others, is the equalizer. Lower class, middle class — everybody is low-key suffering the same. There’s no first class on Amtrak. You may buy a business-class ticket, but it’s almost a demotion. The only luxury is a free cup of black coffee. What a moment that connects you with your great-grandfather — sipping a shitty cup of coffee on a train!

Sure, there’s beauty to be seen from a plane, but those sights are God’s, not America’s. Looking down, the endless grid of farms is flattened, those tiny beautiful lives they’re leading down there dismissed by the sheer distance. From Amtrak, you see it all. The geography of America.

Riding a train is a patriotic experience. In an unregulated, overexpensive modern world dependent on private companies who don’t hold consumers’ interest at heart, Amtrak is the answer. A little private, a little public. A celebration of a democratic, borderline-socialist (gasp!) utility that’s just for us. To our leaders I say, more shit like this, please. More lines, better trains. Connect Nashville to Atlanta. L.A. to S.F. Seattle to Denver. If we do that, we may just connect ourselves back into a nation.

JAMES AUSTIN JOHNSON is a comedian, actor, and cast member on Saturday Night Live. He considers Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series the best music for traveling.