While reading the column by The Chas (Charles Coddington) in the September 27 issue of The Voice (click here for article) about his early fascination with trains, it got me thinking about some broccoli I ate last night. No. I did think about it, but that’s not what I’m referring to here. I’m referring to my fascination with trains when I was a kid. Unlike The Chas, neither of my grandfathers worked for the railroads, although they may have been run out of boxcars by club-wielding railroad conductors. But that didn’t diminish my interest in the least.
I grew up about a block-and-a-half from a small railroad depot. My friends and I used to hang out near the tracks and wait for the big steam engines with all their cars to puff through on their way to who knows where. My mother was certain one day I’d get too close to the tracks and get sucked under the wheels of a speeding train, and she’d end up collecting various body parts to put in a coffin. After the trains sped past, we’d search the tracks for dropped pieces of coal until the station manager chased us off.
Special days for me were shopping trips with my mother and sister when we’d get to ride the Chicago, Aurora, & Elgin, and the “L,” east into Oak Park. We’d take a bus to the station at 17th Avenue in Maywood. Many times we were the only rail riders. A pole on the edge of the wooden platform held aloft was a signal flag. A heated battle would erupt between me and my sister to see who got to pull the chain to raise the flag so the train would stop. When it was my sister who got to do it, I spent my waiting time thinking of how I could push my sister in front of the train without getting punished.
Once boarded, we’d get to sit on those wonderful basket weave seats that made lovely patterns on our bare legs. We never rode the train west, so Aurora might have been Abu Dhabi as far as I knew. West was a great mysterious land where, at some point, the world ended and you fell off to be gobbled up by the dragons and sea monsters that inhabited Aurora. I should have known better, because my cousins lived in Moline and we visited them all the time. And even though we fell off the world once, we were never Aurora dragon chow.
A particular incident stands out from my trackside coal-collecting days. In kid world at that time in the past century, every neighborhood had a kid who would do stupid things, eat worms, for instance, if gently prodded with the threat of death. One day Jimmy The Worm-Eater tagged along with four of us to see the big trains up close. He’d plucked a couple of cattails from a nearby ditch and laid them on the track to see what happened when the train ran over them, then scampered off to where the rest of us crouched in the weeds. Soon, we heard a train approaching. Billy, one of the kids, told Jimmy The Worm-Eater he didn’t think it was a good idea to do that because he’d probably wreck the train and then he’d really be in trouble if he wasn’t dead with the rest of us who’d be killed in the wreckage. We all snickered when the color drained from Jimmy The Worm-Eater’s face. He bolted up, but Billy grabbed his leg. Billy told him it was too late because the train was almost there. Jimmy The Worm-Eater looked as if he was about to cry. A few seconds passed and he bolted again, this time escaping. We all yelled for him to come back, but he made it to the tracks. I thought for sure, just as my mother said, he’d be sucked under the speeding train an end up looking as if he’d stepped out of a Popeil Chop-O-Matic. Jimmy The Worm-Eater grabbed the cattails and ran just as the train passed a few feet away.
Apparently the station manager had seen it all because he ran out of the office toward us, waving some kind of stick and swearing all the while. We, of course, took off and Jimmy The Worm-Eater decided to stick to acting as the neighborhood worm geek.
It makes me sad to think kids today can no longer have that kind of fun. What a deprived existence.
• Just a few words here to thank the Sugar Grove and Oswego Libraries for being host to author events these past two weekends. All of us attending had a lot of fun, made new friends, and even managed to sell a few books. Can’t wait until next year!
