Train nostalgia

[fbhjr]

When my father moved to Massachusetts in the 40’s he didn’t want to live in
the city. So, he got on a train out of town and went to the last passenger
stop. There he found a town that still had lots of cows, chickens and
other animals. It reminded him of Vermont, so he and his wife built their
house there.
He worked in Boston and took the train into work every day for the next
twenty years.
Even when they built the loop highway around Boston through his backyard
taking his house by eminent domain, he only moved a few streets over and
kept going to work by train.
Eventually his office moved out of town to a place he couldn’t take the
train. He wasn’t very happy about that, but kept going to work by car for
another twenty years.

My new office overlooks a train station on the same line that runs through
the town where I grew up. It is the same line my father used to take for
more than 20 years. Granted extended an additional 20 miles to the second
loop road around Boston that was built in the intervening time.

It’s a strange sort of nostalgia to sit at my desk now, hear the train
whistle and think, that train is going off past the old house.

Of course I haven’t been back to the house since my father died 13 years
ago. And, haven’t ridden the train in a similar amount of time.
But, it’s still a bit of nostalgia for me.