ALL ABOARD!

Babes in Toyland

What lies crushed beneath?

I don’t think contemporary America contains many junk piles. If so, are they easily accessible to children? I tried doing my own research but became convinced the deep state is hiding the alien technology that once filled junk piles before Democrats ruined everything with their commie environmental laws. When I came to I realized this is no doubt a very good thing. I’m not sure that the thrill of childhood adventures made up for the effects of the toxic chemicals to which we boomer children were exposed courtesy of the so-called Greatest Generation.

Every lumber yard, gas station, manufacturing facility, and sand-and-gravel pit in existence once featured a small cliff or deliberately excavated hole over which or into which the proprietor cast a fascinating selection of junk along with cans, bottles, and broken glass smeared with the residues of God knew what. This may go a long way to explain the idiocies perpetrated by members of my generation, the one known as the boomers. Breathe too much in the way of dichloroethane fumes as a child, die a brain-addled, raving adult victim of a preventable disease you were sure was a hoax.

Nevertheless, these wonder heaps were excellent sources of interesting odds and ends to crush beneath the wheels of passing trains.

You read that right. We had trains to play with. I’m not talking Lionel either. My brothers, sister, friends, and I had something much more fun, namely, the real thing.

When we couldn’t get down to “the tracks” because our parents were on the warpath about it, my brother and I created little charts on index cards taped to the sills of our bedroom windows, out of which we could, albeit at a distance, observe passing trains. In this way we kept track of sightings of select box cars — that’s the kind of fanboys we were. None of this could compare with the thrill of being there and experimenting with the powers of the smoke-belching behemoths. They made rolling coal look like a soccer mom delivering her little darlings in a Prius.

Do contemporary children have more sense than to play around tremendous thundering monsters that can squash you like a penny? If you don’t think pennies are squishy find a railroad, put one on the track, and retrieve it after a train has passed over it. They’re squishy.

They are also a gateway drug. We soon tired of pennies. What else could we find, and, with the help of many tons of rolling steel, squash, break, or pulverize?

Chemical-smeared bottles, cans, dolls, and other miscellany from the junk pile of a nearby lumber yard soon fell beneath the great wheels. After the train passed we ventured forth to examine the wreckage. My bestie even offered up an old TV chassis for destruction. I watched in horror, sure the train would be derailed. It wasn’t, leading that same maniac to even greater enormities, which may form the basis for a sequel to this article.

When, having failed to prepare for an oncoming train, we had nothing else, we would create, on the track, a row of stones from the roadbed. How many? As many as we could line up before the train got too close. How close was too close?

You don’t want to know.

Running over dozens of roadbed stones must have set up an awful clatter-banging inside the compartment where the engineer & fireman were stationed, because they often leaned out the window and shook their fists at us. Of course we were not deterred. Nor were we more than moderately spooked by the railroad cop who came around asking us, as we engaged in relatively innocent activity, if we knew anything about the kids who were putting stones on the tracks because those kids were in serious trouble, etc etc.

We must have been as dense AF because even that heavy hint was not enough. We were hooked. Eventually the actual cops came around, loaded us into the squad car, took us home, and had a serious talk with our parents. We strained to overhear but got nothing. Well, not nothing. Grounded for life? Grounding wasn’t a thing back then.

The story made its way into the local papers, leading to me and my bestie being shamed in class by our fourth grade teacher. Teachers didn’t hesitate to shame students in the 1950s. I can still hear her saying putting stones on the railroad tracks! and the other kids looking at us like we were nuts because we were. I didn’t think I could be thrust any farther into the dweeb zone but I found out.

You would think I would wise up but no, as my buddy Richard Leslie can attest. But that is a story for another time.