Railroad Coins

When I was a kid we used to put coins on the railroad tracks and retrieve them after the trains had passed. We did this at the elevated section of the BMT in Brooklyn, Actually it was on the Avenue S trestle at East 16th Street, next to Kelley Park and the Public Health Building. I still have one of the coins; a nickle with the year of my birth showing. The rest have all been scattered to the ages, lost years ago. And, I miss them. 

So, taking myself over to the freight tracks which run along Route 115 in Cornelius, I decided to relive a bit of  my youth, placing several coins on the rails, intending to retrieve them in a day or two.

Upon my return, I was rewarded with the most perfectly flattened and oval shaped remains of the two coins. Art is all around us in various forms. The quarter even has all the ridges on the rim intact, making it perfect material for a pendant. 

Art is all around us. We can ignore it, appreciate it, and sometimes even create it. The quarter which was crushed will be turned into a beautifully engraved pendant for my wife. And she loves me enough to wear it! I know because I asked her.

"The Blue Hotel" by Stephen Crane with James Keach and David Warner

This was the first time I have seen this remarkable film from Jan Kadar. It was first released in 1977 and then again in 1984 as a PBS special. Set in the last days of the American frontier, the story takes place in the parlor of the Blue Hotel, located in the small town of Fort Romper, against the backdrop of an impending blizzard.

Three men get off the train for an overnight stay in the hotel. Almost immediately the viewer is aware that one of the men is not quite right. The character known as "Swede", played by David Warner, is angry, apprehensive and almost expectant of trouble. He announces that "many men have died in this room", a charge vehemently denied by the owner. The Swede then further declares that he too will be killed that night, in that very room. Thinking him mad, the owner, Scully, does all he can to placate the Swede, mostly to no avail.

The owner's son, Johnnie, played by James Keach, is caught cheating at cards in a game with the Swede. The two then go outside, in the blizzard, to fight it out. The other guests, who have by now taken a dislike to the Swede, are all there to cheer on the owner's son. Initially, as he is beating the Swede, the other guests are crying out for the younger man to "Kill him, kill him!" They are sorely disappointed when the Swede nearly beats the younger man to death.

When everyone adjourns back into the hotel, the Swede decides to check out. When the owner refuses to accept any payment from the Swede a new argument is born. Just as that argument is escalating, a stranger enters the hotel seeking shelter. The Swede begins to pick on him, demanding that he listen to his story. The man refuses and the Swede puts his hands on him. The man asks him to remove his hand from his shoulder, and when the Swede does not, the man swiftly stabs him to death with one thrust. He then turns his knife over to the proprietor and asks to be awoken when the sheriff arrives in the morning.

Who is responsible for the death of the Swede? Was it the Swede himself? Had he read too many dime store novels about what to expect out west? Was he fulfilling a self-perpetuating fantasy? Or was it the intolerance of the other guests, and the hotel owner, for not understanding the strain the Swede was under? Thinking he was about to be killed could not have been easy to live with. But that only begs the question of why he would go someplace to experience what he fears the most?

In the end, director Jan Kadar has left us with a stunning visual adaptation of the Stephen Crane story. 130 years removed from the action portrayed in this film, these questions of intolerance still remain unanswered.

Trains

Trains, they've always been there, on the periphery of my life, whistling in the night, chugging through my past and present, fueling my imagination. I've watched them, and counted the cars as they lumbered past, some over a mile long! I've never minded waiting for a freight train to pass. It's an opportunity to let my imagination go.

Ever since I was a kid, I've walked the tracks, flattened coins on the rails, collected spikes, felt the rush of the air as the train passed within inches of me, rattling the earth beneath my feet as they did. My reaction has always been the same, I stand silently, wrapped in the fading sound, lost in the vibrations emanating from the rails, and up through my body, like some surreal electrical charge.

What is this fascination with trains? I'm not the only one. There are museums, train rides, songs about great train wrecks, and the stories of the hobo's who rode the rails during the Great Depression. These two photos are of some trains a few miles from our house. The Caboose is my favorite.

This is a typical caboose, an icon of American railroads. It's a home on wheels, wheels that are bound to the tracks, making them seem permanent, a fixture in our collective minds. This is home to the signalman as he travels at the rear of the train, the last person to see where the train has been. It's a backwards journey, you can't see anything in front of you. Just a fading landscape, growing smaller and smaller as the wheels go clickity clack, clickity clack, on their journey across America.

And sometimes, when I'm waiting for the train to pass, I find myself wishing I were a bit younger. I just might hop on board...