Malcolm's Memories: Trains, Streetcars, and Grandma

redstate.com

June has always been my favorite month. Good weather, with more to come. Father’s Day. My birthday. And Grandma time.

I’ve written here about the exciting time each year of my childhood when my grandmother would come down from Canada for the holidays.

But of equal excitement in my memories were the times I went to her house in Canada for weeks. That happened every year starting in June.

It was a day’s drive from our rural home in northern Ohio to her house in rural Ontario. It was very slow two-lane highways all the way to Canada, but there, a modern four-lane expressway waited.

On arrival, Grandma would make me as many pieces of toast as I wanted in her toaster with the little doors that opened to flip over the bread slice and toast the other side. And her homemade jam, of course.

It seemed normal to me to be of two countries. Like everyone else in the family, my parents were born in Canada. They became naturalized U.S. citizens, but I was the first-born Yank in the bunch.

Canada was refreshing every year. People there talked a little differently, eh? The pace was slower. Manners seemed more important to them. Every mailbox bore a crown. Not that I had much experience with paper money; but different denominations were different colors. The money and stamps had a girl on them.

And the candy! Oh, the candy! The chocolate bars were so rich and creamy. And in Canada, I met Macintosh’s butterscotch toffee. Nectar of the gods.

Grandpa had lost his haberdashery shop in the Depression. They moved to the country and took up farming, chickens and asparagus. I helped feed the cluckers twice a day, collected their eggs, and played with them, if chasing is play.

There was a hobo named Burt in those days. He’d stop by from time to time to do a chore or two for a sandwich. And a wire cupholder always held an upside-down glass for him by the outdoor faucet.

No matter what we were doing, at midday, Grandpa had to sit down in his wicker chair by a large radio in the sunroom. He never changed the station from CFRB. I would sit there too and watch him absorb the noon news. That would get him through until the afternoon newspaper arrived later.

I still have those two chairs.

Today, Grandpa’s house and barn are gone. The area is now suburban, and the old farmland has sprouted a tidy crop of two-story townhouses with their own paved garages.

Grandpa’s car was quite different from our woody station wagon back home. His was a 1932 Deuce coupe he bought new just before the stock market crash. It inhabited a garage with a dirt floor.

The trunk lid came off to carry larger cargo. The windows, as I recall, were lowered by gravity and held in place by leather straps. And you secured the car door with a sliding steel bar.

We walked pretty much everywhere in that time and community. No sidewalks, but the roadside was sandy, quite suitable for bare feet. Weaver’s General Store was a short walk distant.

There, by the metal garbage cans in the back, I met a stray cat, who became the first of my many rescue pets. You might guess his color. His name was Rusty.

Every summer, Grandma and I had “a day in the city.” You could tell it was a big deal because her purse that day was shiny black. She wore a hat and gloves. And my shorts had to be clean.

Our day together was especially exciting for me because the annual ritual was designed to involve use of every form of transportation, except a horse. But we had one of them back home.

Grandma and I would walk together to a highway that morning and wait for a bus labeled “Toronto.” We took that many miles to the start of the streetcar line. We rode that downtown. We went to the big department store that had a dining room with linen napkins.

There, the waiter pushed my chair in because my legs did not reach the floor. He called me “Sir,” and I could order my own meal.

The toy department was the next stop where I could pick one thing.

Then came a movie, including popcorn. Grandma’s purse dispensed an unlimited supply of tissues. Movie ratings were not necessary in those days because even movie makers knew what was suitable for everyone.

After the show, holding hands, we walked to Union Station, where those iron leviathans awaited like snorting race horses eager for the start. They were coal-fed in those days, steaming and hissing on parallel platforms as we boarded.

The train ride was the special day’s grand finale. Now, big machines have always fascinated me – big trains, big ships, big planes. I’ve been on a nuclear submarine and a C5-A Galaxy.

Of course, I was the very opposite of big then. But even years later, well into adulthood, we started our honeymoon on a train from that very same Toronto station.

Trains didn’t just jerk ahead in those days. The whistle would blow. A conductor would shout. Then came the slow chuff, chuff, chuff, with the billowing smoke, increasing speed, and hypnotic clickety-click rhythm.

I sat by the open window. I don’t remember how long the journey was back to Grandma’s. Not long enough. We walked the quarter-mile from the station to her house. And everyone wanted to hear the day’s details.

At night in my bed there, I could lean against the cooler plaster wall and actually feel the reassuring rumble of every passing train, carrying people and things I could only imagine to and from faraway places I didn’t know.

Many summer evenings, Grandpa would walk me to the train crossing. He would buy me an ice cream cone, always butterscotch. In Canada, the “scoops” of ice cream were shaped like sticks of butter.

The man in the tower who hung lanterns on the gate at night and manually lowered them for each train knew us by sight. He would wave and point in the direction of the next train. I’d lick my butterscotch ice cream and stare intently down the tracks. Sometimes, it seemed to take forever.

I can’t say it was exciting the moment the engine’s bright headlight first pierced the growing dusk far down the tracks. It was very exciting. And a little scary too, good scary. The huge thing was coming right at us. Very quickly. And silently.

And nothing could stop it.

The gate bells would start to ring. The arms came down slowly. I thought I could hear the steam engine. “It’s coming,” I told Grandpa, you know, in case he’d missed it.

And then, a little too quickly and suddenly, the train arrived at full speed. It was right there in real-life. Rumbling. The ground actually trembled. So did I. You could see its breath. Feel its heat. Even feel the sound; it enveloped everything.

The engineer leaned out his window up so very high. He waved. He actually blew the whistle for me. I may have been jumping up and down. I know my mouth was wide open.

And then, just as quickly as it was right there thundering almost within reach, the massive machine was gone. And replaced for long minutes by the steady clickety-click, clickety-click of its obedient string of followers passing by.

A few specks of ash had settled on my butterscotch ice cream to confirm the passing of those magic moments.

Many years later, I was returning to Toronto for work. Not surprisingly, I took the train.

Chin in hand, I was idly staring out the train window for many miles, fondly recalling those distant June days at Grandma’s house. She and Grandpa were long gone.

But the memories survived in my mind as vividly as yesterday, walking barefoot on the sandy roadside, chasing the chickens, holding hands with her, and those evenings of intense anticipation with Grandpa watching that bright engine light bear down on us.

It was quite dreamlike looking out the window of the fast-moving diesel train. There outside, flashing by just now was the old train station, the general store, the barn, and over there, yup, still standing was Grandma’s house and the cool plaster wall I leaned against to feel the night trains.

But wait!

It wasn’t a dream anymore. This was very real. All these many years after waiting, watching, and hearing the trains pass over the tracks by Grandma’s house, without any planning, I was literally riding on one of the trains passing over the very same tracks right by her house.

It felt like a round trip.

This is the 32d in an ongoing series of personal memories. Links to all the others are below.

The True Story of an Unusual Wolf, a Pioneer in the Wild

That Time I Wore $15K in Cash Into a War Zone

I Fell in Love With the South, Despite That One Scary Afternoon

Wildfires I've Known

More Memories: Neat People I've Met Along the Way

Unexpected Thanksgiving Memory, a Live Volcano, and a Moving Torch

The Horrors I Saw at the Three 9/11 Crash Sites Back Then

The Glorious Nights When I Had Paris All to Myself

Inside Political Conventions - at Least the Ones I Attended

Political Assassination Attempts I Have Known