Traveling the rails ...

The desire to disappear to destinations unkown, to capture the child's dream. I bring a story from the Mid Hudson Valley in Dutchess County.

For this one glorious day, Betty Jean didn't feel her chest tighten or hear the sound of her heart beating in her head. The source of her fear would never find her in this holy place. Holier than the church or the place where the sisters slept, this was where she would come one day.

She loved to listen to Mr. Garfield and the many stories he told the children about working "the rails" as he called it. She longed to climb aboard one of the silver and black cars and go to faraway places. Once her mother took her in a bus to visit her aunt. Another time when her grandmother died her mother's brother took them by car to another town an hour from where they lived.

"I'm gonna leave as soon as I get to be eighteen. That's the age when they can't make you come back."

Chloe felt sad. She had no desire to leave the warmth of her mother's arms. She would miss the silver giggle of her grandmother and the soft mellow tones as the two women sat at canning time, singing the hymns from church.

They waited anxiously for the 4:20 from Albany, following the rails until they vanished around a bend in the river. Neither of them spoke. They didn't know it was the sounds of the wheels rolling over the rails that reached deep inside to capture their young imaginations and speak to them in dreams.

It was this magic that grappled their young minds and pushed them down the hills each time, long before the engine poked around the first bend of the journey heading out of Albany, heading into their station, and continuing to other towns and cities, connecting the map.

They watched as the first car made the turn down river, listened for the sounds of the engine, the long whine of the whistle, the burst of steam as it slowly pulled into the station. They loved to count the cars or the number of passengers getting off the train.

Often when they had the time, they went to another part of the river and waited for the long freight trains to pass over the high tressle bridge with its endless variety of boxcars.

Soon they saw the sun as it began to fall into the river and knew they had to leave or be late. Up the narrow hills, the walk home was longer.

In her dreams,

I am,

fOIS