home, Oscar!”
Then there was a screeching sound. Behind Mr. Applegate, a Pennsylvania engine hung over a trestle bridge, its wheels spinning. The heavy engine dangled by a single coupling completely off a bridge over the blue-glass Mississippi River.
“It’s going to crash!” I yelled. I threw my coat on a huge leather banker’s chair and raced to rescue it before all five pounds of steel engine smashed the delicate river underneath.
“Wow, you’re quick!” said Mr. Applegate. “Musta cost Old Man Pettishanks a small fortune to have that river custom-made. Imagine if we broke it! I’d owe him for five years’ indentured servitude!”
Mr. Applegate and I fixed the broken track bed under the engine just as Dad and I had done. Then we charged the engine stacks of all the rolling stock with smoke pellets.
“Everything set?” he asked with a grin.
“All aboard. Let ’em roll!” I answered. He pulled the throttle on the main controls, and all twenty-one trains raced around their tracks at daredevil speed. The lobby lights had been turned off, leaving two small all-night luminators, low glimmers behind the barred tellers’ windows. Only the glowing lamps from the train stations and the small-town crossings glittered in the darkness of the bank’s huge interior. Outside, Christmas Eve snow hurled itself against the thirty-foot bank windows. Drifts and eddies whirled under the street lights of Washington Avenue.
The lobby of the First National Bank of Cairo wasn’t exactly as cozy as our basement in the old house on Lucifer Street, but it would have to do. For the next couple of weeks, whenever I visited my Blue Comet, for a few minutes now and then I felt as if I were home again, running our trains in our world below the world.
Tonight, when I rested my head sideways against the table near a bend in the tracks, the Golden State Limited on its way to California tootled past. From the club car, the tin man with the spectacles read his tin newspaper and the tin boy stared out at me. I wished a tiny Oscar could hop right onto the layout board and run into another world.
“Are you sleepy, Oscar?” Mr. Applegate asked.
“Not sleepy,” I answered. “Just pretending.”
“Pretending?” asked Mr. Applegate.
I was embarrassed to tell Mr. Applegate that when I laid my head down on the layout there were moments when I truly believed I could be an inch tall and race up the verge of the station. In my dream, the papier-mâché rocks would suddenly be fieldstone. “My dad always used to ask me that same question,” I said.
“You miss him,” said Mr. Applegate.
A wave of sorrow swept over me, and I could not speak. I concentrated on the Happy Warrior as it emerged from a mountain tunnel, whistling and spewing out a delicate trail of white smoke.
“Mr. Applegate,” I asked, “how long do you suppose it would take for one of these Lionel trains to run all the way from here in Cairo to Los Angeles, California?”
“Well, let’s do the numbers, Oscar,” said Mr. Applegate.
“If a train leaves Station A in the east vestibule and travels in about sixty seconds to Station B in the west lobby and the stations are, say, two hundred and twenty feet apart, how fast is the train going?”
I multiplied the distance times the speed. “About two point five miles an hour, give or take,” I answered. “To go eighteen hundred miles at two and a half miles an hour would take seven hundred and twenty hours. Seven hundred and twenty hours is thirty days or one month. One month, give or take!”
“Very good,” said Mr. Applegate. “But you are forgetting something!”
“What am I forgetting?” I asked.
“Professor Einstein’s theory of relativity,” said Mr. Applegate. “Now try it this way: If a train leaves Station A and travels in sixty seconds to Station B, and the stations are in actuality two thousand miles apart, roughly the distance from Chicago to Los Angeles, how fast will that train be
Then there was a screeching sound. Behind Mr. Applegate, a Pennsylvania engine hung over a trestle bridge, its wheels spinning. The heavy engine dangled by a single coupling completely off a bridge over the blue-glass Mississippi River.
“It’s going to crash!” I yelled. I threw my coat on a huge leather banker’s chair and raced to rescue it before all five pounds of steel engine smashed the delicate river underneath.
“Wow, you’re quick!” said Mr. Applegate. “Musta cost Old Man Pettishanks a small fortune to have that river custom-made. Imagine if we broke it! I’d owe him for five years’ indentured servitude!”
Mr. Applegate and I fixed the broken track bed under the engine just as Dad and I had done. Then we charged the engine stacks of all the rolling stock with smoke pellets.
“Everything set?” he asked with a grin.
“All aboard. Let ’em roll!” I answered. He pulled the throttle on the main controls, and all twenty-one trains raced around their tracks at daredevil speed. The lobby lights had been turned off, leaving two small all-night luminators, low glimmers behind the barred tellers’ windows. Only the glowing lamps from the train stations and the small-town crossings glittered in the darkness of the bank’s huge interior. Outside, Christmas Eve snow hurled itself against the thirty-foot bank windows. Drifts and eddies whirled under the street lights of Washington Avenue.
The lobby of the First National Bank of Cairo wasn’t exactly as cozy as our basement in the old house on Lucifer Street, but it would have to do. For the next couple of weeks, whenever I visited my Blue Comet, for a few minutes now and then I felt as if I were home again, running our trains in our world below the world.
Tonight, when I rested my head sideways against the table near a bend in the tracks, the Golden State Limited on its way to California tootled past. From the club car, the tin man with the spectacles read his tin newspaper and the tin boy stared out at me. I wished a tiny Oscar could hop right onto the layout board and run into another world.
“Are you sleepy, Oscar?” Mr. Applegate asked.
“Not sleepy,” I answered. “Just pretending.”
“Pretending?” asked Mr. Applegate.
I was embarrassed to tell Mr. Applegate that when I laid my head down on the layout there were moments when I truly believed I could be an inch tall and race up the verge of the station. In my dream, the papier-mâché rocks would suddenly be fieldstone. “My dad always used to ask me that same question,” I said.
“You miss him,” said Mr. Applegate.
A wave of sorrow swept over me, and I could not speak. I concentrated on the Happy Warrior as it emerged from a mountain tunnel, whistling and spewing out a delicate trail of white smoke.
“Mr. Applegate,” I asked, “how long do you suppose it would take for one of these Lionel trains to run all the way from here in Cairo to Los Angeles, California?”
“Well, let’s do the numbers, Oscar,” said Mr. Applegate.
“If a train leaves Station A in the east vestibule and travels in about sixty seconds to Station B in the west lobby and the stations are, say, two hundred and twenty feet apart, how fast is the train going?”
I multiplied the distance times the speed. “About two point five miles an hour, give or take,” I answered. “To go eighteen hundred miles at two and a half miles an hour would take seven hundred and twenty hours. Seven hundred and twenty hours is thirty days or one month. One month, give or take!”
“Very good,” said Mr. Applegate. “But you are forgetting something!”
“What am I forgetting?” I asked.
“Professor Einstein’s theory of relativity,” said Mr. Applegate. “Now try it this way: If a train leaves Station A and travels in sixty seconds to Station B, and the stations are in actuality two thousand miles apart, roughly the distance from Chicago to Los Angeles, how fast will that train be
Similar Books
