Did you ever get just the right prompt at just the right time? |
Now you have done it. Brought tears to my eye in the dark of gritty coal smoke and surges of steam busting loose from iron pistons driven eighteen wheeled locomotives. "All Aboard! All Aboard," after a glance at a watch 'as big as my momma's cat head biscuits' according to a fiddle sawing Copenhagen chewing country music man. I grabbed my cheap cardboard valise, gripped steel handrail and climbed onto the Bangor And Aroostook Limited. Heading south away from the lumber camp and home to your arms. After months in a dirty camp, wood smoke, and a mountain of working man sweat, the soft leather seats and luminous interior welcomed me like a drownings man's first taste of air. A mind hiccup of 80 years shall be permitted, I hope. I was never a lumberjack, nor have I traveled the steel road of the B&A, it's just that your writing suggestion took my breath away, hard upon the heels of my big brother's story of deer feeding and little girl raising. Imagine Digger, my big brother, who strode through life hating and taking, so I thought, sitting in his basement with his toddling daughter, creating layouts in mini scale, mountains, lumber camps, trees and switch yards, just so they can recreate scenes and share stories of the Maine history I so artfully imagine. Now you have done it. Brought tears to my eye in the dark of gritty coal smoke and surges of steam busting loose from iron pistons driven eighteen wheeled locomotives. |