trains and childhood memories
14 Dec 2005 10:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneyou know what'd be really cool? to take a train somewhere. i haven't ridden a train since i was in japan, in july 2000.
there's a train track a block from here; the freeway curves around to run parallel to it and the passenger trains go by in full view of our livingroom window. it's not nearly as loud as the freight trains that would go past on the tracks a block from my childhood home.
i've walked the dog along the fence next to the tracks lots of times, and the train has overtaken us several of them. they come up suddenly, move faster, are gone sooner.
the tracks a block from my parents' house intersect the street, but they're screened with trees to either side, and a deep ditch runs just along the edge of them, on the near side at least. there's pebbles and sometimes water in the bottom of it and it takes a bit of effort to scuffle down the bank, and the sides rise over your head at first. there's thick weeds and, if i remember right, a bit of poison ivy round the edges. you can find old bits of iron, pieces that have gone flying off the trucks and the wheels, sometimes rusted so thickly they flake off all over your hands. they look decades old, perhaps a century or more, but they probably aren't really. the first few times i ventured down there (with my dad--i wasn't allowed to go alone) i'd pick up as many as i could carry and make him carry them back too, but i quickly realised they were too common for that to be a very worthwhile pursuit.
i don't know if a train ever went by while i was in the ditch, or if i'm remembering my vivid imaginings of it. whatever i remember, it's terrifying, and you definitely wouldn't want to be in the ditch when a train went by. they're slow compared to passenger trains, but they're giant and heavy and they're still fast and deadly. they make a huge racket that would be a deafening roar if you stood right there in their shadow, and they sway from side to side as they go. and what if one of those big iron crosses flew off while you were there, and hit you?
but that fear made exploring the ditch a delicious adventure. the neighbourhood around vanished; it was like being in a little canyon specially made for me, and it brought to mind all kinds of fantasy books. first it was picking our way over the uneven rocks, following every short sharp bend of the ditch as the bottom gradually filled with more and more water and it narrowed, and the walls got shorter, but the trees growing around the edges denser. then suddenly we emerged between two fenced backyards, dogs barking and leaping to one side, and we walked carefully on the short, steep slope of grass so we wouldn't have to wade through the water. eventually the ditch ends at a storm drain, about six blocks from home, and the embankment you clamber up to get back to the real world is only a few feet high.
in my memory for all these long years that adventure--taken several times, at least a few illegally without adult supervision--retains stubbornly this dreamy quality, and this feeling that it's long, a whole day of suppressed excitement, always hovering on the edge of fantasy and reality, of the mundane and some breathtaking discovery.
when i was sixteen and i'd only had my dog perry for a few months, my mom dropped his leash when we were walking together and he got frightened and bolted, and he stayed gone for three days. i hadn't been down that ditch for years. it seemed shockingly shallow and short when i leapt down into it and rushed from one end to the other, calling the dog over and over again. when i looked up i could see over the edge. i knew where i was on my mental map of the neighbourhood the whole time, and i came to the other end in just a few minutes. the water was barely an inch deep; i didn't even have to worry about soaking my shoes. at the time i was too upset and worried about perry to dwell on it, and i wasn't sad so much as surprised at the difference between my old childhood memories and new adult observations. it wasn't an adventure; or a mysterious little pocket of nature where fantasy seemed to flirt with reality, and the fabric of mundane experience seemed thin; or even a picturesque stream, like a slice of the forest transplanted into the city. it was just a depression in the ground, half clay and sand and half grimy concrete, dead leaves, dirty runoff water and crass litter.
i've been there a few times since then, but i've never discovered more than traces of my early childhood memories, never been able to match the pieces of them to their counterparts in the real world landscape. but they remain more vivid and real to me now than the latter memories, which have never replaced them.
there's a train track a block from here; the freeway curves around to run parallel to it and the passenger trains go by in full view of our livingroom window. it's not nearly as loud as the freight trains that would go past on the tracks a block from my childhood home.
i've walked the dog along the fence next to the tracks lots of times, and the train has overtaken us several of them. they come up suddenly, move faster, are gone sooner.
the tracks a block from my parents' house intersect the street, but they're screened with trees to either side, and a deep ditch runs just along the edge of them, on the near side at least. there's pebbles and sometimes water in the bottom of it and it takes a bit of effort to scuffle down the bank, and the sides rise over your head at first. there's thick weeds and, if i remember right, a bit of poison ivy round the edges. you can find old bits of iron, pieces that have gone flying off the trucks and the wheels, sometimes rusted so thickly they flake off all over your hands. they look decades old, perhaps a century or more, but they probably aren't really. the first few times i ventured down there (with my dad--i wasn't allowed to go alone) i'd pick up as many as i could carry and make him carry them back too, but i quickly realised they were too common for that to be a very worthwhile pursuit.
i don't know if a train ever went by while i was in the ditch, or if i'm remembering my vivid imaginings of it. whatever i remember, it's terrifying, and you definitely wouldn't want to be in the ditch when a train went by. they're slow compared to passenger trains, but they're giant and heavy and they're still fast and deadly. they make a huge racket that would be a deafening roar if you stood right there in their shadow, and they sway from side to side as they go. and what if one of those big iron crosses flew off while you were there, and hit you?
but that fear made exploring the ditch a delicious adventure. the neighbourhood around vanished; it was like being in a little canyon specially made for me, and it brought to mind all kinds of fantasy books. first it was picking our way over the uneven rocks, following every short sharp bend of the ditch as the bottom gradually filled with more and more water and it narrowed, and the walls got shorter, but the trees growing around the edges denser. then suddenly we emerged between two fenced backyards, dogs barking and leaping to one side, and we walked carefully on the short, steep slope of grass so we wouldn't have to wade through the water. eventually the ditch ends at a storm drain, about six blocks from home, and the embankment you clamber up to get back to the real world is only a few feet high.
in my memory for all these long years that adventure--taken several times, at least a few illegally without adult supervision--retains stubbornly this dreamy quality, and this feeling that it's long, a whole day of suppressed excitement, always hovering on the edge of fantasy and reality, of the mundane and some breathtaking discovery.
when i was sixteen and i'd only had my dog perry for a few months, my mom dropped his leash when we were walking together and he got frightened and bolted, and he stayed gone for three days. i hadn't been down that ditch for years. it seemed shockingly shallow and short when i leapt down into it and rushed from one end to the other, calling the dog over and over again. when i looked up i could see over the edge. i knew where i was on my mental map of the neighbourhood the whole time, and i came to the other end in just a few minutes. the water was barely an inch deep; i didn't even have to worry about soaking my shoes. at the time i was too upset and worried about perry to dwell on it, and i wasn't sad so much as surprised at the difference between my old childhood memories and new adult observations. it wasn't an adventure; or a mysterious little pocket of nature where fantasy seemed to flirt with reality, and the fabric of mundane experience seemed thin; or even a picturesque stream, like a slice of the forest transplanted into the city. it was just a depression in the ground, half clay and sand and half grimy concrete, dead leaves, dirty runoff water and crass litter.
i've been there a few times since then, but i've never discovered more than traces of my early childhood memories, never been able to match the pieces of them to their counterparts in the real world landscape. but they remain more vivid and real to me now than the latter memories, which have never replaced them.
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(no subject)
Date: 14 Dec 2005 09:50 pm (UTC)Things were so much bigger and so much more special back then, yes.
(no subject)
Date: 15 Dec 2005 09:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 15 Dec 2005 09:58 pm (UTC)Btw, is tomorrow still okay for movie-watching and sticky-plastic collecting? Chi was interested in coming along too, since she's also been waiting to see the movie. :)
(no subject)
Date: 15 Dec 2005 10:04 pm (UTC)i'll be out of the house until about noon, and anytime after that is good. i warn you, however, i may not have done the dishes. :)
(no subject)
Date: 15 Dec 2005 10:34 pm (UTC)Also, I'm known to sometimes avoid doing the dishes for so long that they start to develop intelligent lifeforms. So, er, I won't mind. :D
(no subject)
Date: 15 Dec 2005 10:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16 Dec 2005 10:20 am (UTC)