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February 17, 2005

train of dreams

Just before I awoke this morning (or so it seemed) I dreamed I was in some midwestern greasy spoon conversing amiably with the other patrons. They were, it seemed, all shriners and VOF's: the everymen of the American aged.

There was a model train on tracks that ran all the way around the dining room. I know nothing about the scales of model trains, but this one had tracks which were about three inches apart. As the model train clacked softly past us, suddenly it gave me an overpowering memory of the sound of a real train speeding close by a house; the rushing, the rumble, the deafening, mornful, descending peal of the horn as it passes by. I suddenly became so excited that I turned to the old man next to me and, bunching my fists close in front of me and shaking them, said, "Doesn't it make you wish it was a real train?" He looked confused. I tried to explain: "when I first heard a train up close, I found the noise and vibration to be annoying. Eventually I stopped noticing it. Then I moved away from trains, and once in a while I get nostalgic for the experience." The old man smiled, but there was a subtext to his expression I couldn't read. Still smiling, he gazed distractedly down at his plate.

The deafening peal of my alarm clock ripped me away from this vignette, and as I arose, I thought, "I don't even like trains." And it's true that I never really did before this morning. Now I have a desire to experience one rushing past from up close, to feel the ground shake, and hear the air quiver with the multi-toned blast of
of a Great Northern howling by.

Posted by joel at February 17, 2005 06:47 AM

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Posted by: k_sra at February 18, 2005 12:22 PM

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