In training for the holidays
There’s nothing like a model train set to make you realize just how boring the 1950s were.
“Wait!” you’re thinking. “We lived under the constant threat of nuclear war! We had great inventions: Videotape! Super glue! Radial tires! Mr. Potato Head!”
All true. But for almost every male child in America in the 1940s and 1950s, model trains were a gateway out of a real world racked by war and the constant threat of nuclear holocaust.
I had a windup locomotive set for many years that I set up under our Christmas tree, an oval of track encompassing a lighted cardboard village. I lay on my belly for countless hours, watching the train go ’round and ’round. Later I discovered smaller HO trains and somehow convinced my mother to allow me to put a 4′ x 8′ sheet of plywood on our dining room table and install a complete train layout on it. I spent many an hour creating the miniature world of Plasticville, complete with houses, a farm, a church, a train station and the tiny, immobile plastic people that populated them.
But any kid who owns trains eventually comes to the conclusion that a basic set is too limiting. My son Steve realized as much when I bought one for him almost 25 years ago. I set it up under the tree and we watched it go ’round and ’round for maybe three minutes before Steve asked, “Is that all it does?”
“Well, yes,” I said, “unless you have switches to make it go elsewhere. We could do that!”
A kid who had played video games since the age of 4, Steve simply walked away. So did I.
Until this December, after I saw a friend’s Facebook video of his trains going ’round and ’round … and up and down and through tunnels and over trestles and all the amazing things you can make model trains do if you have room, time, patience and money.
So I purchased a well-used Marx electric set from the 1950s and a more modern Lionel set through eBay. After setting up the locomotives and cars, I again realized that model trains don’t do much. But there’s something about toy trains and Christmas that resonates with men my age.
As a kid, I traveled with my mom on trains to Kalamazoo to see her parents. I was fascinated by every aspect of the journey: waiting on the station platform for the Pennsylvania Railroad diesel engine to pull up; the conductor with his pocket watch and ticket-puncher; the uniformed porters who carried our bags; a black man in a white jacket who walked down the coach aisle, selling ham sandwiches on square bread. I had never seen square bread before.
What other wonders might the world be concealing?
Consequently, I guess my attraction to toy trains is logical as an adult. True, they go ’round and ’round. So does the world. But at least I can control trains.
The real world is hard. I lost my sister to cancer in May, an old friend to COVID-19 last week. Although I think of myself as 18, the geezer in the mirror says, “No, you ain’t!”
So, I take the train to Plasticville.
Its citizens wait dutifully on the platform of a train station but never get onboard unless you pick them up and shove them in a boxcar or gondola. Farmers endlessly feed the chickens. No one there ages or dies – unless they get carried away and eaten by a dog.
Quarantined in 2020, I can empathize. My trains are a gateway out of a real world racked by pandemic and the constant threat of another year of quarantine. But I’ll survive!
Unless I get carried off and eaten by a dog.