The basement train line

About the time my little brother, Mel, could put his finger tips over the edge of a table and pull himself up for a better look my dad started the freight business from the depot outside his shop, around the basement, through the steps.  The open topped fright car delivered a load of soap under the steps for mom to put in the washing machine and came back to the depot, to the utter delight of the little boy peering over the top of the plywood platform.

With a man and two boys for underwriters, the train business grew.  The square footage available at the large plywood station in the corner multiplied as the train tracks went up the hill against the shop wall, through a tunnel, stopped for crossings, went down a hill into the switching yard, to the round house.

The Lionel™ engine left the round house under a full head of steam, climbed the slight grade along the drive way wall, rounded a nice curve to the backyard wall, still climbing.  She headed straight through the open steps, stopped at the platform by the set tubs to off load mom’s scoop of soap and whistled along the down grade of the track on the next lower step, down, down, down, back to the yard.

I remember helping my mom with of loads of laundry while three guys whooped it up over their trains, which were a major source of entertainment for several years.  Then interest waned and the trains were boxed up on the shelf.  We kids still whiled away a rainy afternoon having marble races on the downhill track.  Two cat eye shooters can race side by side on O gage track!

Eventually all the rolling stock and equipment from the train yard in the basement was long donated to the train museum in Akron, and I thought no more about trains until my uncle was cleaning out his basement and gave me a Lionel™ locomotive he thought he’d borrowed from dad.  It had been run hard and put away wet, but I suppose that is the fate of steam train engines, the engineer and fireman’s combined ages not exceeding twenty one years.

I asked my brother Walt, the original engineer, to build a glass box to showcase the old war horse.  It was missing the cow catcher, saddest of all, and we had to buy a piece of O gauge track on line.  He built a wonderful glass box with walnut trim the glass panels slid into. I could interest none of my children or grandchildren in having the extremely heavy paper weight, so I took it to a nursing home.  It went on a ledge in the common room and had an audience of men in wheel chairs reminiscing, when I left.

With thanks to Bill Lisleman, who visited a train yard any engineer could love.

The Lionel™ Museum

The Big House

Our house is on old farm land, part of the pasture for a large dairy operation and cheese factory across the road.  The factory suffered a fire in the twenties and never reopened.  The land was sold off and in the ensuing decades homes were built on acreage on both sides of the farm lane.  In the forties the six families on the lane petitioned the township to assume responsibility for the lane; the usual assessments went out, the road was paved. 

Few of the houses are visible from the street, their access drives go through the wood and up the hill.  In the summer only we and the neighbor immediately down the hill have a house visible from the road.  All the foliage obscures the houses up the hill. 

From the back of our house, in the winter, we see The Big House. Mary has it lighted like a fairy wonderland in the winter, and she has cheered many a dark winter night at our kitchen table.  Like many houses on the street, this one just grew.  A small cottage, another room added, a wing put on by another owner and then one last owner, like Mary, who pulls it all together.

The Big House is visible, in the winter, through all the north facing windows of our studio.  Back when we were weavers we had ten hand looms in the studio and more weavers than ourselves.  One was Marge, a lovely old woman who loved to wander and talk, and never understood why she always made minimum wage, instead of the piecework rate of other weavers.

I loved Marge.  She always wore Mary Janes, and I loved her little feet treadling away under the loom. She turned on her hearing aid and asked if that was a joke we were laughing at, and please repeat it for her. The Big House, twinkling up the hill, fascinated her.

There are no city services in our township; every property has a well or a cistern, or both, and a septic system.  Because we fulled so much woven fabric we had our septic tanks emptied twice a year.  Angus was in dog heaven then, bouncing around the septic truck on his tigger springs, inhaling deep doggie breaths.

Of course the sewer smell would seep into the studio, which overlooked the septic tanks, and anyone working would breathe shallowly for twenty minutes.  “What’s that smell?!” Marge inquired very sharply the first time she worked on a septic day.  We explained the tanks were being emptied, then we explained septic systems, then we explained what they do, then we explained why there were no sewer lines in our township to an increasingly skeptical Marge.

“Well,” she said.  “I know The Big House wouldn’t have a septic system.  They’re on city water!”  And her little Mary Janes treadled faster.  She never understood why her paycheck was bigger that week, so I explained piece work again.

Source

On the road with Mom

Mom passed most of her driving skill genes along to her kids, and I’m pleased to say I sent those genes, at least, on to my kids.  Both are very good drivers, unlike their father. (I knew him before the term Road Rage existed; that’s the descriptor, I’ve come to understand, for his passing a driver who irritated him, cutting back in front and hitting the brakes.)

When I was young I had no idea my parents drove well.  We never broke down, had an accident or were stopped by a policeman, so there was nothing to hear on that score except a remark on the wrong doing of anyone observed pulled over to the curb by a policeman.

Mom was more obsessed with speed limits than dad, especially concerning his love of beating a train to a crossing.  Any 1950’s road he tried this on could not sustain more than 35 mph, and he certainly would not have defied flashing red lights or descending gates.  I think she disliked the impression he might impart to three children bouncing in the back seat, urging him on. 

This is the same woman whose father taught her to put a car in neutral at the top of the hill “to save on gas.”  And certainly the same woman who did not protest when Dad speeded up a hill to give three jumping kids the thrill of being air born at the crest.

In thinking back on her stories, a lot of Mom’s driving skills came from her father, who I did not know, and her mother, my Grandma Rolf who took me on many trips with her.  Her dad loved cars, loved to drive and saw as much of the country as he could back in the twenties and thirties.  He taught Mom how to drive those big Buicks across country or through New York City.

Mom’s big city skills were impeccable. She was an excellent leader of a caravan of cars and took good care of her train.  For instance, my first rotary, in Boston.  I was following mom; we were in the wrong lane, and needed the rotary to stay on our route out of town.  She applied a firm rule:  my plates are out of state, let me in.  I followed in her slip stream; there was no metal on metal and not even loud application of brakes, we did it.

Her finest skill was “making the hole.”  She kept her caravan together, or changed leaders of the pack, by dropping back slightly and allowing another of us to pull in ahead of her.  We would return the favor if we needed to swap leaders.  Occasionally she would see the need of another driver, drop back and wait.  “Good, he saw the hole!” Or, “Come on, I’ve made a hole for you!”

The penultimate driving statement remained:  “My plates are out state.”   “Our plates are out of state.” “Can’t you see these plates are out of state!”  We saw the USA before interstate highways were invented.  Our plates were out of state!

My Uncle's caption.  Mom in the front seat, watching her father's progress.

“I’ve heard about snow angels; I’ve never seen photos. Hint.” Elephant's Child

Snow pants

Snow angels

Bus 39 will be at least half an hour late

The only person in the house who wished for snow.

Still wishing?

Good grief; she's taller than another pair of pants.

"If I had snow pants I could make snow angels."

Santa has been notified.