A Boxcar Child
Of Trains and Childhood and Memories
When I was a lad, the window in my room faced north and straight up my street. At the end of my street, maybe about a quarter mile away, was an enormous set of railroad tracks and a freight train yard. A bridge called the Ludwig Avenue Bridge would take one over the tracks.
You can see where this is going I think. We rarely used the bridge.
These were working freight tracks, by the way, a series of lines that connected downtown Buffalo with, well, the rest of New York. My friend Alan lived, literally up against those tracks.
My parents would be horrified to learn of some of the exploits we got into on those tracks. That’s on my list to write about sometime. One of them involved - let’s just call it - hitching a ride on a empty boxcar and riding it so far out of my town that it took us an hour to walk back once we figured how to get off the thing without breaking any bones.
I loved trains growing up. I love them today.
From our bedroom where we live today, when the windows are open, I can hear the sound of the freight train whistle as it eases its way through downtown Manchester and it always brings me back. I’m less inclined today to ‘hitch’ a ride then I was back then, of course, but it also makes me think of one of my favorite book series when I was a kid - The Boxcar Children.
Written all the way back in 1924 by Gertrude Chandler Warner, there’s 160 books in that series. Gertrude only had a hand in about the first 20. And even with those, only the very first one had anything to do with actual boxcars. (It was the children’s playhouse.) Mainly they solved crimes and mysteries for the rest of the series - a depression era group of orphans raised by their grand-dad. And yes, just like Scooby-Doo, the kids had a dog. Their dog was named Watch.
Anyway, where am I going with this? Oh I remember! In doing some research for this essay, I discovered that in Putnam, Connecticut, there’s a red boxcar museum in her hometown. So, put that on our bucket list of places to visit. Has anyone reading this been out there for a visit?
As I’m sitting here writing this, I was hoping to hear a distant whistle. Nothing this night sadly. But I won’t have to wait too long. There’s always another train right around the bend.
I LOVED The Boxcar Children!!! I wanted to live in a boxcar in the yard, but my mother wasn't having any of it.
I love trains and The Box Car Children. I was fortunate enough to have rode the trains to Philly when they had wood interiors, velvet like seats and no graffiti. My grandfather worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad and later my friend's father was a conductor on the Atlantic City line. Lots of trains in my life.