You wrote bucketa-bucketa so I thought of the pocketa-pocketa of Walter Mitty, who also went to Iceland (in the great, happy, Ben Stiller movie). Pleasant dreams.
What do you mean when you say ....a far cry from the country that attracted our forebearers. They didn't cross the border seeking vengeance. Is that what you think today's immigrants are doing?
No. Immigrants today and in the past are looking for opportunity, safety, happiness, a bright future, whereas American politics today is tribal and angry and about vengeance.
Eileen, a handy reminder that now and then we don't realize what others mean, and so might consider thinking and acting as such. I adamire you for your respectful and straightforward inquiry, to come to an understanding.
The longest train ride I ever embarked on was from New York to Chicago. The rest of the country I’ve seen by thumb. I know train food can be bad and overpriced, but there’s just something about the microwaved Amtrak cheeseburger.
My grandfather on my father’s side was the town drunk. The bartender kept tabs on him for my grandmother. They came from England, were very clannish and had no American friends. My father was born in the states in Hubbard, Ohio in their kitchen on September 12th, a Friday, but Dr. Button tied one on afterward and didn’t register the birth until Monday the 15th, so dad had two birthdays. His father, James Tonkiss, while a hopeless drunk, was a master plasterer who came up with the idea to add color to the plaster to create beautiful pastels. Every so often a company would get him dried out and pay him to come to New York to do ornate plaster work on the ceilings of well known theaters on Broadway. He would complete the job to perfection and their great satisfaction, and susequently return home and drink most of his pay.
My father served in WWII on a destroyer escort in Okinawa. He was happy to join the Navy because he loved the ocean and it enabled him to wipe the slate clean. On the USS Stern 187 he no longer bore the stigma of being the son of the town drunk.
Many years later he and a shipmate located most of the men who served with them and every year they held reunions. Barely talked about the war. Just funny stories. When he died, I continued organizing the reunions and went in his place and made good friends with them and their wives. They are all gone now. But I still have photographs of all of us at a long table at the Neptune Diner and visits to Howe Cavern, the Baseball Hall of Fame and Hershey, Pennsylvania. Each year it was held in a different place. The last one was in Norfolk, VA. Three of the men remained, and we spent the day on a boat cruising all the ships in the Norfolk shipyard. It was a rainy weekend, the kind of rain that chills you to the bone. Norfolk was where they held the first reunion, and everyone agreed it was appropriate to end there. It was sad; my daughter was with me and they loved her, and after saying our tearful goodbyes, knowing we would never see one another again, we left to drive back home to Boston. I miss my father who died too young, every day. His official Navy photograph hangs on the wall in my bedroom along with his dog tags, his metals, and a photograph of him sailing on his beloved 27 foot Tartan, with a beer in his hand, the wind at his back and a look of pure satisfaction on his face.
My father (from Concord, MA) was in the Navy in WWII also. He joined as soon as he turned 18 in November of 1943 because his parents wouldn't let him join earlier than that. All but 3 of the boys in his high school class dropped out to enlist.
Yes, my dad was on a hurry too. He was seventeen. So young! He didn’t have a happy home life as I mentioned, so he kissed his mother and sisters goodbye and off he went.
Diminishing the “miscellaneous”, perhaps like that extra “l” in that word. Perchance that be the key to happiness for us that can’t spell while “bucketa-bucket-ing” to our next adventure.
I took a train ride at age 13, traveling from Fertile, MN to Minneapolis for the FFA convention. The journey began in a single, self-propelled car that took us took us on a short ride to meet up with a much longer, east bound passenger train. My recollections of the trip are few. The precarious feeling of crossing trestles, looking out my car at the rear of the train to see the front of the train far ahead as we rounded a long curve, a conductor in a spiffy suit, and the chaos of the rail yard in Minneapolis.
My 2md train ride was at age 19, in college but on vacation with my folks at my Aunt's place in the God Forsaken Wilderness and Tamarack Swamp south of Duluth. It was before school started but I had to get back to Minneapolis for my job at a Mom and Pop Grocery store in NE Minnnepolis. We flagged down the Soo Line train -- engine, one passenger car, box car -- in Cloverton MN and I rode it into Wisconsin, headed to St. Paul at Dresser Junction, got into Union Station, took the busses home.
Years later I often rode the BN express commuter train into Chicago from our home in Naperville IL 3 blocks from the station. I'd grab a Wall Street Journal, head for the single seats on the upper deck, read the paper, and watch the sububan scenery go by at 70 mph.
Garrison, you are and have been such a wonderful and great gift in my family’s and my life. I hope that your heart knows just how well you are loved and deeply appreciated. Thank you for your essays. My wife or so read them out loud and laugh from our bellies. They make our days bright and beautiful …and yes…help us to also remember that there is more to life than malaise. Please keep riding the rails of writing, good health, humor and happiness. Best wishes from Owasso, OK.
Elderly people (such as myself) who say in effect that the world is changing for the worse but they don't care because they are living a happy life, focusing solely on their tiny circle of existence, are fulfilling that narcissistic stereotype of aging. Their awareness and focus on life at large dwindles to that miniscule self-focused world. I'd be happy too, if I could forget about what my generation is bequeathing to our children and grandchildren, the thousands of serious and bright students I have taught (and the others too :-)), our earth and all its life forms. But I do not believe I am called to forget these things willfully.
So tell me what you've done lately to correct what we bequeathed. And don't forget the progress that's been made in our time, particularly in science and medicine. Anyway, the world belongs to the young and I claim the right to enjoy this world and what I see and hear up close. Call it "minuscule" if that gives you pleasure, but in my opinion you're just preening. Get over yourself.
Well, "miniscule" yes and no. As a "Wandering Sue", I've picked up probably hundreds of hitchhikers in my time. Some of them have been our social peers. One, for example, was a professor who planned to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. He was portaging in trail packs and caching them along the way, so that he wouldn't have to hike into towns to resupply himself every so often. Another was a young man, a "runaway" from a strict religious community, who wanted to see "The World Out There!" Outside Las Vegas, at a little past one o'clock in the morning I stopped for a young woman dressed in an outfit with a skirt nearly up to her crotch. She worked in a casino until that hour, and she knew that the local busses no longer did their routes when she had to go home. When I stopped, she approached my care very carefully. When she looked in and saw a single female driver, relieved, she sighed as she slid into the passenger seat!
What I'm trying to say is that "The World Out There" is very BIG! Many of the readers of this website might be like me - "Middle Class" or more, University educated, and folks who have had "successful Lives" in their own ways. But folks like us often "revolve in our own planetary space. "
That's one of the things I've always enjoyed about APHC! Garrison Keillor and associates introduce us to a wide variety of folks in their skits and tales. For example, I remember a situation in which a car stopped at a filling station. The wife got out to use the rest room, and the husband drove off without her - assuming that she was in the back seat. I can relate to tales like that. What would that poor woman do? From the time period of that presentation, I'd doubt if she had a cell phone in her purse to ring up her spouse and say "Come Back!" There are a lot of little details in life, and a lot of different ways to live! Dollar for dollar, for me, Garrison Keillor and team have done more, I think, for the listening public in the way of inclusivity, that any other resource I'm aware of!
I'm enjoying all these memories of train rides! Trains are one of my main modes of "wandering!" Personally, the ride that stands out most in my mind is a transcontinental Canadian National Railway trip from Nova Scotia to British Columbia - mostly within miles of the US northern border. We were assigned seats, but as a "Train Addict" i preferred riding in the caboose, on the "back porch." By the time I got there, there was an Aussie of middle age already ensconced in the other seat. We introduced ourselves, though I don't recall his name. I'll call him "Sport," as in "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport!" Together, we dubbed ourselves "The Tailgaters" for that journey. Once he began down Memory Lane, I became so emmeshed in his tale that we never lost sight of each other except in our beds, when it was too dark to see!
Sport had been Allied soldier for Australia in World War II, stationed in the Pacific Theater. He had been taken as a Prisoner of War (POW) early on in the action. The Japanese looked upon the Allied soldiers whom they captured as " Free Labor"! The South China Sea was afloat with Allied Forces Navies - British, American, Australian - you name it. The Japanese military looked at a map, and figured that it would be much less of a problem for them to supply their forces on the Eastern Front by building a railroad through Burma, reaching the southern Soviet Union etc. by land. And, what do you know! Japan didn't have that much spare "Manpower," but there were all these Prisoners Of War, needing to be fed and housed!. Why not give them exercise while they were in their custody? Wouldn't it be nice if they built a railroad into the southern Soviet Union so they could exchange supplies?"
Here's where Sport came in. He was "One of the Lucky Ones" who would be housed, fed and clothed throughout the duration of the war, simply for "a little manual labor" as a member of a working gang of track layers. As you can imagine, they were driven - hard! But! Psychologically, they found something to balance that out! Instead of railroad ties, they cut down banyan trees and such from the local forests, and cut the trunks into RR tie lengths. Then they would lay the still round trunks on the roadbed, and hammer the rails in on top of that!
That sounds like a lot of hard work, doesn't it? But, here's the clincher. The POWs soon noticed that these trunks had very short useable "life spans" in the rainy tropics. These "ties" would turn to mush under the constant pounding of the over-laden trains. Within half a year - that labor-intensive railroad was useless! It remained that way for the duration of the war. Sport was one of the lucky POWs who were exchanged for the Allies' Japanese POWs during the Armistice. And there he was, sitting on the tailgate of that west-bound CNR train with me, reliving his days on the Burma Railroad! He wasn't complaining about the prisoner's lot. Far from it, he felt as if, in the long run his crews of POWs were the "Victors!" They had misled their captors into an intensive effort that had no tangible outcome, in "Real Time!" At the end of the war, Burma actually was able to go in with square cut, tarred hardwood ties, and to maintain a functioning form of public transportation!
I never knew her, so I suppose this is projection, but I am happy to hear that your mother takes each opportunity to remind you of her love. Eventually, if we're fortunate, we'll understand a bit more about how she does that. Also: 'I have never felt so happy as I do now. This will change.' What magnificent optimism, to speculate you will one day be even more happy.
A lot to unpack from this excellent essay but I'll concentrate on trains. Last Fall I had planned to take the Lake Shore Limited --on the Boston branch until meeting up at Albany -- to Chicago before transferring to the Empire Builder to Minneapolis for my High School's Centennial (Mpls. Edison, class of '58). But I didn't for a number of reasons. The train wasn't going to work for my 65th -- and last -- HS reunion next week but wouldn't because they only run twice a week. I looked into flying -- which I hate, haven't flown in years -- due to scheduling problems. So, I'm not going but next year I'm going to plan ahead, ride the train in mid-August (in a sleeper to Chicago), visit my few friends left in the Cities plus relatives, and then go to the MN State Fair one last time.
You wrote bucketa-bucketa so I thought of the pocketa-pocketa of Walter Mitty, who also went to Iceland (in the great, happy, Ben Stiller movie). Pleasant dreams.
Thank you!
What do you mean when you say ....a far cry from the country that attracted our forebearers. They didn't cross the border seeking vengeance. Is that what you think today's immigrants are doing?
No. Immigrants today and in the past are looking for opportunity, safety, happiness, a bright future, whereas American politics today is tribal and angry and about vengeance.
Eileen, a handy reminder that now and then we don't realize what others mean, and so might consider thinking and acting as such. I adamire you for your respectful and straightforward inquiry, to come to an understanding.
The longest train ride I ever embarked on was from New York to Chicago. The rest of the country I’ve seen by thumb. I know train food can be bad and overpriced, but there’s just something about the microwaved Amtrak cheeseburger.
My grandfather on my father’s side was the town drunk. The bartender kept tabs on him for my grandmother. They came from England, were very clannish and had no American friends. My father was born in the states in Hubbard, Ohio in their kitchen on September 12th, a Friday, but Dr. Button tied one on afterward and didn’t register the birth until Monday the 15th, so dad had two birthdays. His father, James Tonkiss, while a hopeless drunk, was a master plasterer who came up with the idea to add color to the plaster to create beautiful pastels. Every so often a company would get him dried out and pay him to come to New York to do ornate plaster work on the ceilings of well known theaters on Broadway. He would complete the job to perfection and their great satisfaction, and susequently return home and drink most of his pay.
My father served in WWII on a destroyer escort in Okinawa. He was happy to join the Navy because he loved the ocean and it enabled him to wipe the slate clean. On the USS Stern 187 he no longer bore the stigma of being the son of the town drunk.
Many years later he and a shipmate located most of the men who served with them and every year they held reunions. Barely talked about the war. Just funny stories. When he died, I continued organizing the reunions and went in his place and made good friends with them and their wives. They are all gone now. But I still have photographs of all of us at a long table at the Neptune Diner and visits to Howe Cavern, the Baseball Hall of Fame and Hershey, Pennsylvania. Each year it was held in a different place. The last one was in Norfolk, VA. Three of the men remained, and we spent the day on a boat cruising all the ships in the Norfolk shipyard. It was a rainy weekend, the kind of rain that chills you to the bone. Norfolk was where they held the first reunion, and everyone agreed it was appropriate to end there. It was sad; my daughter was with me and they loved her, and after saying our tearful goodbyes, knowing we would never see one another again, we left to drive back home to Boston. I miss my father who died too young, every day. His official Navy photograph hangs on the wall in my bedroom along with his dog tags, his metals, and a photograph of him sailing on his beloved 27 foot Tartan, with a beer in his hand, the wind at his back and a look of pure satisfaction on his face.
My father (from Concord, MA) was in the Navy in WWII also. He joined as soon as he turned 18 in November of 1943 because his parents wouldn't let him join earlier than that. All but 3 of the boys in his high school class dropped out to enlist.
Yes, my dad was on a hurry too. He was seventeen. So young! He didn’t have a happy home life as I mentioned, so he kissed his mother and sisters goodbye and off he went.
Carly Simon said it best. Stay right here, cuz these are the good ol' days.
Diminishing the “miscellaneous”, perhaps like that extra “l” in that word. Perchance that be the key to happiness for us that can’t spell while “bucketa-bucket-ing” to our next adventure.
I took a train ride at age 13, traveling from Fertile, MN to Minneapolis for the FFA convention. The journey began in a single, self-propelled car that took us took us on a short ride to meet up with a much longer, east bound passenger train. My recollections of the trip are few. The precarious feeling of crossing trestles, looking out my car at the rear of the train to see the front of the train far ahead as we rounded a long curve, a conductor in a spiffy suit, and the chaos of the rail yard in Minneapolis.
My 2md train ride was at age 19, in college but on vacation with my folks at my Aunt's place in the God Forsaken Wilderness and Tamarack Swamp south of Duluth. It was before school started but I had to get back to Minneapolis for my job at a Mom and Pop Grocery store in NE Minnnepolis. We flagged down the Soo Line train -- engine, one passenger car, box car -- in Cloverton MN and I rode it into Wisconsin, headed to St. Paul at Dresser Junction, got into Union Station, took the busses home.
Years later I often rode the BN express commuter train into Chicago from our home in Naperville IL 3 blocks from the station. I'd grab a Wall Street Journal, head for the single seats on the upper deck, read the paper, and watch the sububan scenery go by at 70 mph.
I’m the happy recipient of your newsletter and book. Cheerfulness puts a smile on my nights and your newsletter adds laughter and relief
So what is the waitress joke?
How did the waitress gain her faith? She waited on several men a night. Mennonite. (In the original version, she was a prostitute.)
Garrison, you are and have been such a wonderful and great gift in my family’s and my life. I hope that your heart knows just how well you are loved and deeply appreciated. Thank you for your essays. My wife or so read them out loud and laugh from our bellies. They make our days bright and beautiful …and yes…help us to also remember that there is more to life than malaise. Please keep riding the rails of writing, good health, humor and happiness. Best wishes from Owasso, OK.
Doug and Gerre Schwert
Ditto.
Elderly people (such as myself) who say in effect that the world is changing for the worse but they don't care because they are living a happy life, focusing solely on their tiny circle of existence, are fulfilling that narcissistic stereotype of aging. Their awareness and focus on life at large dwindles to that miniscule self-focused world. I'd be happy too, if I could forget about what my generation is bequeathing to our children and grandchildren, the thousands of serious and bright students I have taught (and the others too :-)), our earth and all its life forms. But I do not believe I am called to forget these things willfully.
So tell me what you've done lately to correct what we bequeathed. And don't forget the progress that's been made in our time, particularly in science and medicine. Anyway, the world belongs to the young and I claim the right to enjoy this world and what I see and hear up close. Call it "minuscule" if that gives you pleasure, but in my opinion you're just preening. Get over yourself.
He has an elf?
Well, "miniscule" yes and no. As a "Wandering Sue", I've picked up probably hundreds of hitchhikers in my time. Some of them have been our social peers. One, for example, was a professor who planned to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. He was portaging in trail packs and caching them along the way, so that he wouldn't have to hike into towns to resupply himself every so often. Another was a young man, a "runaway" from a strict religious community, who wanted to see "The World Out There!" Outside Las Vegas, at a little past one o'clock in the morning I stopped for a young woman dressed in an outfit with a skirt nearly up to her crotch. She worked in a casino until that hour, and she knew that the local busses no longer did their routes when she had to go home. When I stopped, she approached my care very carefully. When she looked in and saw a single female driver, relieved, she sighed as she slid into the passenger seat!
What I'm trying to say is that "The World Out There" is very BIG! Many of the readers of this website might be like me - "Middle Class" or more, University educated, and folks who have had "successful Lives" in their own ways. But folks like us often "revolve in our own planetary space. "
That's one of the things I've always enjoyed about APHC! Garrison Keillor and associates introduce us to a wide variety of folks in their skits and tales. For example, I remember a situation in which a car stopped at a filling station. The wife got out to use the rest room, and the husband drove off without her - assuming that she was in the back seat. I can relate to tales like that. What would that poor woman do? From the time period of that presentation, I'd doubt if she had a cell phone in her purse to ring up her spouse and say "Come Back!" There are a lot of little details in life, and a lot of different ways to live! Dollar for dollar, for me, Garrison Keillor and team have done more, I think, for the listening public in the way of inclusivity, that any other resource I'm aware of!
"An accidental life." Ain't that the truth!
Trains + A worthy destination = Happiness
I'm enjoying all these memories of train rides! Trains are one of my main modes of "wandering!" Personally, the ride that stands out most in my mind is a transcontinental Canadian National Railway trip from Nova Scotia to British Columbia - mostly within miles of the US northern border. We were assigned seats, but as a "Train Addict" i preferred riding in the caboose, on the "back porch." By the time I got there, there was an Aussie of middle age already ensconced in the other seat. We introduced ourselves, though I don't recall his name. I'll call him "Sport," as in "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport!" Together, we dubbed ourselves "The Tailgaters" for that journey. Once he began down Memory Lane, I became so emmeshed in his tale that we never lost sight of each other except in our beds, when it was too dark to see!
Sport had been Allied soldier for Australia in World War II, stationed in the Pacific Theater. He had been taken as a Prisoner of War (POW) early on in the action. The Japanese looked upon the Allied soldiers whom they captured as " Free Labor"! The South China Sea was afloat with Allied Forces Navies - British, American, Australian - you name it. The Japanese military looked at a map, and figured that it would be much less of a problem for them to supply their forces on the Eastern Front by building a railroad through Burma, reaching the southern Soviet Union etc. by land. And, what do you know! Japan didn't have that much spare "Manpower," but there were all these Prisoners Of War, needing to be fed and housed!. Why not give them exercise while they were in their custody? Wouldn't it be nice if they built a railroad into the southern Soviet Union so they could exchange supplies?"
Here's where Sport came in. He was "One of the Lucky Ones" who would be housed, fed and clothed throughout the duration of the war, simply for "a little manual labor" as a member of a working gang of track layers. As you can imagine, they were driven - hard! But! Psychologically, they found something to balance that out! Instead of railroad ties, they cut down banyan trees and such from the local forests, and cut the trunks into RR tie lengths. Then they would lay the still round trunks on the roadbed, and hammer the rails in on top of that!
That sounds like a lot of hard work, doesn't it? But, here's the clincher. The POWs soon noticed that these trunks had very short useable "life spans" in the rainy tropics. These "ties" would turn to mush under the constant pounding of the over-laden trains. Within half a year - that labor-intensive railroad was useless! It remained that way for the duration of the war. Sport was one of the lucky POWs who were exchanged for the Allies' Japanese POWs during the Armistice. And there he was, sitting on the tailgate of that west-bound CNR train with me, reliving his days on the Burma Railroad! He wasn't complaining about the prisoner's lot. Far from it, he felt as if, in the long run his crews of POWs were the "Victors!" They had misled their captors into an intensive effort that had no tangible outcome, in "Real Time!" At the end of the war, Burma actually was able to go in with square cut, tarred hardwood ties, and to maintain a functioning form of public transportation!
What a nifty story to read! Thanks! (I’ve always loved train rides!)
I never knew her, so I suppose this is projection, but I am happy to hear that your mother takes each opportunity to remind you of her love. Eventually, if we're fortunate, we'll understand a bit more about how she does that. Also: 'I have never felt so happy as I do now. This will change.' What magnificent optimism, to speculate you will one day be even more happy.
A lot to unpack from this excellent essay but I'll concentrate on trains. Last Fall I had planned to take the Lake Shore Limited --on the Boston branch until meeting up at Albany -- to Chicago before transferring to the Empire Builder to Minneapolis for my High School's Centennial (Mpls. Edison, class of '58). But I didn't for a number of reasons. The train wasn't going to work for my 65th -- and last -- HS reunion next week but wouldn't because they only run twice a week. I looked into flying -- which I hate, haven't flown in years -- due to scheduling problems. So, I'm not going but next year I'm going to plan ahead, ride the train in mid-August (in a sleeper to Chicago), visit my few friends left in the Cities plus relatives, and then go to the MN State Fair one last time.
GK, bon voyage on your trip of a lifetime.