A bee buzzed in the old train car, showing off with its daring acrobatics. It darted and dropped amongst the passengers. A volunteer worked his way down the dining tables, checking and punching the proffered tickets. We teased Nate that we wouldn’t give his ticket over, so that he could have the experience of being booted off a train. Of course, we didn’t follow through with that.
Gabriel, Aaron holding Cassiel, and Nathaniel
“Your ticket has been punched,” I laughed at the cliche. My soon-to-be ten-year-old son didn’t, but I like to think he would have if he’d gotten the joke.
Samantha and I cheese as Nathaniel takes our photo.
Soon enough, the kids scrambled off with their father to get a glimpse of the other cars. We were on the Osceola and St. Croix River Valley Railway for a Homeschool Adventures trip. We were doing an early celebration for Nate’s 10th birthday and Sammi’s 8th birthday. While the other kids explored the historic train, Cass and I cuddled until he drifted off to sleep, his ear against my heartbeat and his hands curled against my chest. I wrapped my hands around his bottom and lower back and we both sighed contentedly.
Beside the tracks, piles of old ties were peppered with capped mushrooms and mold. Flashing by the windows were old poles topped with electrical insulators, sliding and dipping towards the flooded St. Croix River. Called “vintage” in antique stores, the insulators sparkled blue, yellow, and white in the bright sunlight. It was in the 80s that day. Vibrant green ferns and broad-leaf plantains were bountiful in the disturbed soil along the tracks.
We ate lunch when the train picked up speed, scenery whizzing by with the familiar rattles, hisses, and bangs of a moving train. I’d heard the sounds often in my childhood, growing up by the tracks. The story was that you couldn’t be called an adult until you’d jumped the train. I don’t think I ever did – does that make me a child, still?
Nathaniel chugs, to Gabriel’s delight, “Chugga-chugga-CHOO-CHOO!”
We were moving pretty fast now. One of the volunteers later told me that all railway tracks have a speed limit, and some sections of our journey were a higher speed than others. Of course, this speed was nothing compared to the modern trains I’d ridden in Germany ten years before.
My husband broke into my thoughts, answering my eldest son’s question regarding how in the world we’d get back to our vehicle. It’s a there and back trip, but Nate wasn’t sure how we’d turn around. “I don’t know – I’m a trained engineer, not a train engineer,” my husband accompanied this statement with a wry grin. Nate laughed, repeating it and adding, “Get it? Ha ha! Get it?”
Samantha grins for the camera.
Evergreens and deciduous trees flew by while children chattered everywhere. It was lunch time and as I looked around, I saw fresh grapes, fruit juice boxes, cheesesticks, and water everywhere.
Gasps echoed throughout the car when we went over a bridge. “Look! We’re flying!” someone exclaimed. The shadow of the train fell on the mud brown water with nary a support or track in sight. Suddenly a rust-red truss flies by. “That’s why you don’t stick your head out the window,” I had to hold back a laugh at my kids’ dinner plate eyes. The iron supports were very, very close.
The breeze was light, but the air smelled heavy and humid like that of my home in Iowa. I guess you can move throughout the midwest and it’ll stay the same: water logged. A volunteer stopped by. We’d stopped and he was there to explain that someone had really made the engineer angry, so he was running away with the unhooked engine. Nate looked a little concerned. Four whistles later and the engine lazily passed us by and the engineer shouted, “See you later, suckas!”
I’m just kidding. He didn’t really say that; he just waved out the window as he moved towards the former-rear of the train to hook back up. We were halfway.
After the ride Gabriel stretched his legs, toddling all over.
Then a horsefly arrived, taking the place of the bee, to pester my son. In response, I looked up and recited the poem by Emily Dickinson: “I heard a fly buzz when I died.” He groaned in response, and we settled into the familiar patter of parents and children. The trip back was uneventful and soothing. A short trip on the tracks. A memory in the making.
Samantha and Nathaniel staring out at the track from the back of the train.