Choo Choo!

The in-laws lived in a city on the train route. In those days, broke was an under exaguration, and consequently, there was only one family car, a beige Plymouth Satellite. Because I taught private trumpet lessons on Saturdays, the decision was made that mom and the kids would go to Grandma's house by train. The girl and boy were one and three years old; the season was Orthodox Easter, and we needed the teaching money. So, mom and the kids were delivered to the local train station.



Having grown up in a time of decline for the railroad industry, it was not surprising that there were only two passenger trains running daily between New York and Chicago on this, the old main route. It was also not surprising to know that the trains were run down, and dilapidated. They were meagerly staffed and hardly ever ran on time. In fact, sometimes the train would be two, three or even seven hours late, but, for all of their faults, they still were a little more comfortable than the bus.



That Saturday morning they were only running twenty minutes late. The three year old was running too, but he was running wild. He climbed over the old wooden benches that populated the middle of the musty station, ran up and down the isles and peaked into the ticket agent's window. The whole time his sister was carefully confined in her mother's grasp.



When the train finally arrived, the kids and their Mom jumped onboard and quickly found a seat. With the three year old waving out the window, the Midnight Express pulled away, and dad left to teach his 14 private students, seven hours of trumpet lessons that would result in about $28 dollars. Sans the $8 or so for the train ride, it was a cool $20 of net bottom line revenue, a windfall.



Because cell phones hadn't been invented and there was not supposed to be private use of the telephone at the College of Music, we didn't talk until dinner time. The conversation went something like this, "Hey. How was the trip?" There was a pregnant pause on the other end of the line. Then the answer came back. "It was interesting. He ran up and down the isles and drove me crazy for two hours," she explained. "Then, when the conductor came through, he strongly suggested that he had better sit down," she declared. "As he jumped into the seat beside me, I looked over and noticed that he was chewing gum. My first reaction was to look up and down the isle to see who might have given him a piece of gum, but when I looked, the five other people were either not willing to make eye contact or they clearly had false teeth." So, I asked him, "Where did you get that chewing gum?" At first he was somewhat apprehensive and refused to answer. So, I asked him again. "Where did you get that gum?" At that point he looked into my eyes and said, "Back there."



"Back there," she responded. "Back where?" "Where did you get that gum?" He smiled sheepishly, and pointed at the arm rest on the seat behind them. He said, "I got the gum off that seat. It was stuck on the arm."



She spent the next five minutes discussing whether she should make an emergency visit to the drug store to see if they had penicillin lozenges.



Four years later we ventured out on the train again. This time he disappeared on the way home from New York City. After a panic search through the entire car, we found the seven year old boy playing poker with the crew of the train in the club car. He had won about four dollars before we successfully pulled him away from his buddies! Choo Choo Choo.