Chapter 8: Riding the Rails

There I was sitting on the front porch. Cars rattled down Walden street. A couple passed by holding hands speaking Japanese: “Utsukusii hi da.””. Danny was by my side tossing a baseball up and down into his mitt. I was wrtiing in the Revrend Mary's journal about the old Concord Railroad. The next thing I knew, we were both sitting in a railroad car traveling along a bumpy track.

Danny looked over at me. “Am I dreaming, Nathaniel. Weren’t we just sitting on your porch?”

“If you are dreaming, we’re both having the same dream.”

“How did we get on this train?” Danny asked.

“I don’t know. I was just writing in this journal the Reverend Anderson gave me. And the next thing I knew, we were here? The car was smaller than the train we usually rode into Boston. The seats were wooden and uncomfortable. There were only a few other passengers, mostly men, who didn’t pay much attention to us.

“Here. Let me see that journal.” Danny asked.

I passed it over to him. He skimmed through it. “Seems harmless enough.” he observed. “Wait a minute. You were writing a poem about the old Concord railroad. Now we are riding on an old railroad.”

“You can’t be serious. There can’t be a connection between that journal and this train..”

“Ok.” said Danny. You come up with a better explanation.”

Danny stammered, mumbled something about aliens and fell back into a strict silence.

I looked out the window. All I could see was farmland. Rich fertile fields. Any explanation I could think about flew out the window and got lost in the thick smole pouring out of the engine’s smokestack. There were farmers busy at work with teams of horses pulling plows cutting neat curving rows in the ground. When we roared by, they looked up and waved. It was strange to see the words I had imagined on paper a few moments ago come to life.

Just then, a man came into the car. He wore a blue uniform and a round cap with a tiny visor. “Concord,,, Concord Massachusetts he sang. Danny looked up. “Let's get off here. At least we can walk home and figure this out later.”

It seemed like a good idea. We could ask questions later. We rose from our seats when the train began to slow. There was a crowd of people waiting at the station as we stepped down from the car. We watched as they climbed aboard. The engineer blew the whistle, and the tiny train disappeared into the afternoon distances. We turned our backs to the rail and headed into town.

Chapter 7: The Concord Railroad 1843

From my journal………

Early morning

Before the sun

Roaring like thunder

Throwing  smoke and dust

Heating up the rails.

Folks came out of their houses

Stunned by the sound

Farmers stopped their plowing

Children stopped their crying

And rushed to the window.

The train ran along the ponds

Past the hills.

Folks watched it pass like a blur

Racing on

To the future.

Chapter 6: The Journal

The Reverend Mary Anderson was pacing back and forth, back and forth. Her hands were squeezed tightly together and she was whispering to the walls. I had never seen her like this. Usually, she was the picture of calm even when everything else was a storm of chaos.

When I came into the common room, she looked up. “Thank you for coming, Nathaniel.” I didn’t like the tone in her voice and began to speculate what sort of trouble I might be in. She stared at me for a moment and fell silent. I bowed my head so as not to have to look her in the eye. “I need your help,” she continued.

“How can I help you?” I asked.

“I have heard you have the ability to locate lost items.”

“Have you been talking to my grandfather?”

“Yes. And Mrs. Langton whose glasses you found, and Mary Craft whose bicycle you located. You have built a loyal following. People call you the great detective. Now I am at your mercy.”

“Have you lost something?”

My Sunday sermon. I’ve lost the Sunday sermon. Nathaniel, I worked so long on it. It’s about charity to others. Twenty pages of notes. I can never redo that by tomorrow.” Behind her on the wall, a large portrait of the Reverend Peter Bulkely who founded the Church in 1636 stared down at me as if to say Go on son. Work your magic.

“When was the last time you you remember having it?”

She breathed a long, withering breath that made her face wrinkle. “Well, I keep everything in a manilla folder marked sermon notes. I know I was looking it over when the phone range. Then I took it into the Church while I watered the flowers from the window sills.”

“Did you set it down on one of the pews?”

“I looked all through the pews, unless someone picked it up by mistake and wandered out.”

I tried to imagine a disgruntled parishioner laying in wait for the opportunity to seize the Sunday Sermon and save the best part of a Sunday morning.

She continued:”I remember carrying the folder upstairs with me. I’ve been cleaning out some of the closets. They haven’t been touched for years!”

She told me all about how she was arranging the closets, how she spoke to a musician about a wedding service, how she prepared the garden beds along side the Church and in short any number of other jobs. I grew tired just listening, but I just didn’t hear any clues.

“Maybe I’ll just have a look around, and I’ll let you know what I find.”

“Thank you, Nathaniel. I know I’m in good hands.”

Her confidence scared me . I tried to retrace her steps as best I could, but I was sure there was something she left out. Something she did so often that she didn’t even have to think about it while she was doing it. If I could figure that out I would find the sermon.

I went around in circles for a while, and began to get dizzy from the repetition. Then I stopped and sat in a pew. Fingers of sunlight filtered through the plain glass windows. The church was so quiet I could hear the birds singing outside and enjoyed their music. Then it hit me. Of course, the Rev. Mary loves music and would often sit at the piano and plunk out a song. I could just see her stopping by the piano on the altar as she went about her tasks. She might stop. Set down her sermon folder and play. She would play without thinking and without thinking she would walk away from the piano without her folder. Sure enough, when I checked, there was the folder sitting invisibly behind the music holder above the keys.

Needless to say, she was overjoyed when I handed her the sermon.

“I knew you would save the day, Nathaniel.” She hugged me tight. “It’s true, you are Concord’s greatest detective. Wait here, I have the perfect reward for some one of your ability.”

I shook my head. “No need to reward …” but she had disappeared before I could complete my sentence. I imagined myself counting out the dollars, or eating the sweetest apple pie all by myself. When she returned she handed me something else.

“I found it in my closet. It is dated 1846. “ She handed me an ancient notebook. Its cover was leather bound, its pages yellow, and scribbles decorated the yellowed pages. Dust clouds erupted as I paged through it. I didn’t know what to say.

“You could write in it, Nathaniel. It’s historic. Probably worth a small fortune as an artifact.”

“You don’t have to give me anything.”

She pushed it into my hands. “Oh no. Thanks to you, we’ll all profit from my sermon on Sunday. I don’t know what I would have done. “

I thanked her with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. All I could picture was sitting in the pew for hours on Sunday thanks to my detection abilities. I was such a genius.”

“Don’t forget to write in the journal, Nathaniel,” she called.

Little did I know as I walked out the door how much those words would change my life. I did not forget to write in that journal. And my life was never the same again.

The Book of Trees

In these days of trouble we can still find hope in the little, unnoticed things. For me that hope resides in nature. In normal times, we often just take the natural world for granted. We put up with rain, snow and clouds. We know the sun will shine again, the clouds will part and the moon will glow. It is comforting and predictable. Nature teaches us to be hopeful if we pay attention.

In ancient times, people always looked to nature for signs. In Homer's Odyssey, the Heroic Odysseus fought for victory along side Achilles in the decade long war with Troy. He was triumphant on land, but found himself at the mercy of Poseidon, Lord of the seas, for an offense he committed against his son, the Cyclopes. The result cost him ten extra years to return to his family in Ithaca. These were adventures fraught with danger. Every time Odysseus sailed closer to home, angry Poseidon stirred up the waters and pushed him back away from his destination.

In an anonymous medieval ballad Sir Patrick Spence, Patrick was called the “greatest sailor who ever sailed the seas.” When his king wrote him a command to ship out to Norway during winter time, one of his sailors saw the “new moon with and old moon in her arms.” This was a sure sign of dangerous storms. It was warning he ignored. All travelers watched the stars, studied the flight of birds or consulted the bark of trees to gauge the wind. Ignoring the omens in nature brought disaster. The heroic Patrick Spence and his crew ultimately sank fifty fathoms deep where they met their final rest.

Later, in a more scientific age, we can still look for signs in the natural world. Henry David Thoreau branded himself as the “self – appointed inspector of snowstorms” which involved observing and documenting winter's dangers even down to the level of the individual snowflake. When it snowed, Henry called it creative genius in the air. Years later, the writer Robert Frost read meaning in bent, fallen birch trees and stone walls near his New England home. For the poet, a path in the woods became a meditation on the meaning of his life and the choices that created it.

Recently, my wife Meg and I went for a stroll down Mckinley Parkway to get some air and stretch our legs. The sky was heavy with clouds and the wind pushed cold against our faces. Along the way I found myself buoyed by the steady, silent trees standing sentinel on our route. At first glance, their slick bark and bare branches seemed dead on the outside. But on closer inspection, they were clearly alive on the inside. Walking these quiet streets, I could imagine their sap beginning to run while tiny buds were busy decorating their branches. It was a clear message that Spring and the promise of brighter times were on the way.

For me, these trees are a sort of book, and I read in them a story of resilience and strength. They teach us lessons and serve as bookmarks for the countless chapters of creation. Trees do not mark time by the ticks of a clock or the fleeting pages of a calendar. Rather, they stand strong while the harsh winds roar. And in this way they show those who care to notice, a steady path to the brighter future up ahead.

Henry's Moon

Henry's Moon

by Tom O'Malley

The rhetoric of a summer evening on a clear night in July. The stars winked on one by one, and I could see the mythic procession of constellations as they marched across the sky. Orion gripping his shield; the Pleiades sisters huddling close. Bright Jupiter holding court over this galactic panorama. And then the moon rose brilliantly in the east. I couldn't take my eyes off of it. Time and space carried me back.

In July of 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon after landing their spacecraft near the Sea of Tranquility. They spent 23 hours exploring the landing area, taking pictures and studying the desolate landscape. Their historic excursion was witnessed by millions who became fellow sojourners as they bounced along the lunar surface. We all felt free from the constraints of gravity lifted by our common humanity. It seemed the entire planet was unified as we tagged along . For a few days the normal gravity of life seemed lightened. I don't think anyone slept through the adventure in my south Buffalo home. Every phase of the mission, from liftoff to landing was a new discovery, and we were with them all the way.

In July of 1851, Henry David Thoreau became a lunar explorer inspired by the beauty of its light and its effect upon the landscape near his home in Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau called the moon his “mistress of the night, full orbed/ shining steadily.” Those summer evenings spent walking under her sensuous glow transformed familiar landscapes into unexplored territories where trees became “chandeliers of darkness.” Their branches created trellised shadows adding to the evening mystery and recharged his joy with borrowed light. In this night time world, Henry's senses sharpened as he reported clearly hearing voices from miles off mixed with the music of frogs and chirping crickets that enthralled his imagination. Indeed, as he walked Henry felt his creator was improving him as the lunar light filtered through his eyes and directly into his soul.

One hundred and eighteen years later, Neal and Buzz carefully surveyed this new world by photographing and analyzing lunar craters and boulders around their base near the Sea of Tranquility. They collected rocks and carefully recorded surface temperatures and soil samples. They explored the moon and described the stark surroundings as “magnificent desolation.” Both men were transformed by the experience of seeing the earth from the moon, and we earthly observers began to see the moon in a new light that forever changed the perception of ourselves and our place in the universe.

For Henry the full moon at night seemed to heighten his senses. Familiar places became strange and mysterious. Under its auspices, the puzzling pieces of life became unified through time and space. The moon was a portal through time which elevated his soul to experience the transcendent wonders of space exploration. And even though Henry only lived for forty-four years, the metaphysical weight of his lunar explorations seemed to add years of experience to his brief life.

Today, I still find myself looking up at the moon with a sense of wonder and understanding. I love to track its phases as it grows and diminishes. For the Apollo moonwalkers, their journeys seemed like a prelude to the infinite voyage of humankind through the galaxy. The night sky reminds us of this. It offers a larger context for our dreams. Henry Thoreau might agree, for on evenings like these, he stood shoulder to shoulder with Homer on a Grecian hill overlooking the Aegean depths of a life well lived. And when we read his books, we stand right there with him.

Of Studies: 2017

In his essay “Of Studies”, Francis Bacon points out that studies serve for “delight, ornament and ability.” Bacon was writing at the end in the sixteenth century, but this piece seems surprisingly up to date and should be read by students and teachers alike. Back in his day, most people had very little formal education. In fact, very few people could even read. But with the advent of the moveable type printing press more and more books were being printed and the literacy rates began to grow. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the availability of books helped created a new middle class that quickly saw the vocational gold that could be mined by reading. And even more, reading could put them on equal footing with the aristocracy in a society of unbalanced scales. This new middle class knew intuitively what we now take for granted . Today, I find this work to be one of the best treatments on the long standing value of a liberal education.

Too often, the idea of a good education is equated with money. It is expensive proposition to earn a good education, and the result of a good education means more money for the person educated. There is nothing wrong with money. It is true that a well educated person can expect to earn more than a poorly educated one. All this has little to do with test scores, or academic title to be written after our names.

Bacon, an educational philosopher, was spot – on. He saw how studies had led his society to an explosion of innovation and invention. His world seemed a bigger place, an empire of ideas that quickly translated into a better quality of life. Consider his rubric.

Delight: Learning is a delightful pursuit in and of itself. The act of learning something new is one of the inherent joys of life. Let's face it. We live in a tiny corner of the galaxy. Look up! Our little out of the way place in the galaxy offers a lifetime- no – a thousand lifetimes of learning opportunities. Bacon urged his readers to pay attention: The delight is in the details. It may be found in the complex environment of a tiny nameless stream that most folks just step over and ignore And yet, this ribbon of water offer greater complexity than a novel by James Joyce. Too much of school is about simple, one dimensional ideas. Our students need to dig in and explore the complexity of the world. Teachers must allow the time and creativity for this.

Ornament: Think Christmas Trees Each blinking ornament is a reminder of the aesthetic power of light. We are enlightened by study. It doesn't mean we have to have expensive clothes or fancy haircuts. It is something more: ideas ornamented by experience. Bacon suggested that men and women can be adorned by the ideas of Shakespeare and Galileo.

Ability: Studies enable us in the truest sense. We are able to think. We are able to know. And most of all we are able to create something unique. That is because each human being is able to process ideas in a unique way. A computer can process millions of bits of data in seconds. Humans operate more slowly but the results are the rewards of time well spent.

 At the end of his essay, Bacon affirms that studies “perfect nature and are perfected by experience.” That is why an excellent education requires the learner to put knowledge into practice in the wider schoolroom of the world. To spend your life in learning is to expand our limited horizons far beyond the shadowy mornings of sun risen light.

The tractor of our dreams

In 1959, we spent the summer on an old family farm. For my brother, Brian, and me it was an opportunity to dwell in Paradise. But this Eden had a serpent, a serpent in the form of an old yellow tractor.

When my father bought the farm back in 1955, the tractor was left sitting in the barn like an abandoned pet. It was an ancient Alliance. Brian was particularly attracted to the steering wheel.

For me, its most compelling feature was the starter. To fire it up required a judicious half-turn of the crank, followed by careful nursing of the choke.

Unfortunately, my father, grand as he was, could never quite turn the trick. As a result, the machine spent most of its time locked in the barn, a comfortable pensioner graciously idling away its twilight years.

But what are locks to adults are opportunities to children. Brian and I found innumerable entrances into the barn - from sliding under the big double doors to climbing on the roof and "hang dropping" into the hayloft under a loose board. Once inside, that old yellow tractor called to us like the ancient sirens on the ocean of our imaginations.

Brian always headed straight for the driver's seat. From there he could spread his arms across that Olympian steering wheel and "drive" me on all kinds of improbable journeys.

"Where to, Tommy?" he'd call.

"Nanny's house." Even though Nanny's house was more than 60 miles away, Brian would "start" the tractor, drive it up the wall of the barn, off the roof, and over the hills until we finally settled right down into our grandmother's backyard, where we were rewarded with ice cream sundaes. It was our favorite destination.

The summer passed peacefully, punctuated by tree climbing, berry picking, and cow chasing. Then one morning we took the easy way into the barn by sliding under the big double doors. Brian headed for his customary spot on the driver's seat.

"Give the crank a little turn," he called. I had witnessed my father turning the crank a hundred times without avail. But Brian was different. He had a relationship with the old yellow tractor, and when I obliged with the tiniest of turns, the motor coughed twice and roared to life.

"Where ya going?" I shouted over the noise.

"Nanny's house," Brian answered, matter-of-factly.

Before I could reply, the tractor was backing through the barn doors. I'll never forget my brother's delight as he guided the tractor down the hill. It was the purest expression of joy I have ever seen on a human face.

He made wide, sweeping turns to the left and right. He drove around a tiny milk shed beside the barn and over a couple of nascent pines before coming to an abrupt stop in the arms of an ancient apple tree.

Even though the entire ride lasted only a few seconds, the drama that followed stretched out for hours. My mother was hysterical when she came upon the scene, while my father, perhaps out of reverence for my brother's mechanical dexterity, reluctantly shut off the engine and lifted Brian gently from the wreck.

Neither Brian nor the tractor were much damaged by the incident, though afterward I noticed that the crank had been removed from the motor.

There were no more imaginary trips to Nanny's. But ever since that day, my brother and that tractor have been linked inexorably by the everlasting bonds of family mythology. Like Icarus and his wings, like Achilles and his heel, Brian and that yellow tractor still ride on through the golden highways of all our summer memories.

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