Thursday, 7/22/10 - The Way Of Trains

Tom steps up onto the platform. He checks his watch, 4:58, walks the length of the platform and sits on an empty bench.

He looks at the ticket booth then along both platforms and out along the tracks, first one way and then the other, squinting, hoping to see an approaching headlight. Taking a deep breath and sitting back, Tom allows himself a few moments to relax.

Behind closed eyes, Tom sees a pair of rails threading through his life. For him, there have always been trains.

His first train was an HO-scale Lionel Iron Horse. The site of it stopped him halfway as he raced downstairs on Christmas morning. He was four and the train was a gift from his grandfather.

His grandfather is gone but Tom still has the train and he still sets it up under the tree every Christmas. Over the years he has added several other trains to his collection but the Iron Horse - the black engine with a single headlight, front rake and working smoke stack, yellow coal car, silver tanker, green boxcar and red caboose - is still his favorite.

As a boy he would run to the station on Saturday mornings with his ticket gripped in one hand and his sack lunch in the other. He would board the train and ride to the end of the line where he would run ahead of the conductor pushing all of the seat backs to face the opposite direction, ready for the return trip.

He would sit in the train at the turnaround and eat his lunch, watching as the the seats slowly filled with a new set of passengers and the conductor made his way from car to car punching tickets.

And then he would ride back home.

Tom always clipped his ticket on the back of the seat in front of him and watched, station after station, as the conductor passed by without pulling it out, punching it and placing it back as he did for all of the other passengers. The first time it happened Tom was almost to the exit when he heard a deep voice call from behind him, "Son, you've forgotten something." Tom turned around and the conductor was holding the unpunched ticket out to him. He thanked the conductor, pocketed the ticket, and raced for the exit knowing he would be back next weekend.

Some boys would spend Saturday afternoons sitting in the darkness at The Capitol Theater staring up at the screen watching Hollywood stories unfold. Tom preferred to spend his time riding the trains, staring out the window and watching the world unwind.

There was a comfortable magic in trains: they could take you far away but never so far that you couldn't get home.

But that was many years ago. Boys grow up and life moves them to places too hurried and too crowded for the lazy comfort of country trains.

Tom opens his eyes to check his watch then closes them again.



His first job was in a high rise far beyond the reach of the small trains of his childhood. In a pressed three-piece suit and polished wing-tip shoes Tom would pack himself into subway cars with hundreds of other commuters. All seats taken, Tom would stand holding onto the overhead handrail and balance himself against the unpredictable bucking and pitching.

Through grime covered windows instructing him IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, PUSH WINDOW OUT FROM THE BOTTOM, the subway's third-rail sparking would provide brief flash-bulb illuminations of empty sooty-black tunnels.

But, as a boy, Tom saw all he needed through train windows: fields, factories and farm workers. In the summertime the wind would blow through the open windows tousle young girl's braids, give flight to their mother's feathered hats and flutter the pages of their father's newspapers. In the winter Tom's breath would fog the window making a colorful blur of all that passed outside.

Young Tom knew all of the stations by heart. Pick one and a direction, east or west, and he could tell you the name of every town strung out like pearls on the long silver chain of tracks. He could tell you, with breathless anticipation, when the train would submerge cool and dark beneath mountains and when it would surface again into the brightness of the day.

Subways never surface but their passengers do. Tom retired and moved back to the country. If the home he had grown up in had been available he would have bought it. He settled for another home only a few blocks away.

Every day he takes his exercise by walking down to the station. He sits for a while then walks back home.

He used to watch the people waiting on the platform and wonder where they were going and where they had been. He would sometimes buy a ticket and ride to the end of the line where he would fight the urge to run ahead of the conductor flipping the seat backs to the opposite position. He would then ride back home, watching out the windows, knowing the stations, holding his breath through the darkened tunnels.

Tom hears the rumbling and the long wailing sound. He opens his eyes and looks at the station clock. Time is frozen at 3:16, the ticket booth is closed, the platform littered with leaves. The sound is from the street below, not from the the tracks. He stands and takes a final look in both directions. No train will be coming tonight.

Or ever again.

He had watched several years ago as bulldozers excavated the tracks, like the bones of something prehistoric - like his own bones - from the earth. With no sense of reverence the rails were raised high - dripping clots of dirt and weeds - then dumped, clanging and banging, into trucks and hauled away.

Tom walks along the platform toward the stairway that will take him down one flight to the street. He will walk across the street, down six blocks then across and down three more to his home. He will enter, lock the door behind him, walk to the kitchen and help Maggie with dinner.

Tomorrow, as he does every day, he will walk back to the station, sit on the bench, close his eyes and wonder when he will go the way of trains.