All Aboard the Christmas Cannonball!
A train of love for your heart of hearts: The love express winds its way... in
.... by D. Grant DeMan
It was not too hard for an enthusiastic nine year old boy to rise at five thirty. Lights glared through the flaking white paint on the windows of his store front street level bedroom, and he became rankled with the din of the Bay Street Victoria Machinery Depot where he imagined them busy building more U-boat hunters, the better to send Mister Hitler’s sailors down to Davey Jones’ Locker. He had a mighty important project to finish.
Last Christmas he had received a Lionel model train set with tracks his Daddy had affixed to a wooden oval to keep the pieces together. It was not electric - just a windup toy, but he was thrilled. On the other hand Santa had only provided poor Margaret, his younger sister, a couple of raggedy puppet dolls. Somehow he just knew she was envious, sad about the matter, and this was his chance to make it up to her. He could just see the delight in her eyes, the excitement on her smiling face when she opened this particular present.
He shivered when his feet hit the frosty floor, dressed quickly in the dusky room, threw a bucket of sawdust into the kitchen stove hopper, and ran out to the shed, reaching for the pull chain that turned on the naked twenty watt light bulb. There he picked up the rusty crosscut and proceeded to saw the ends off the thread spools.
He thought then of his Momma, and how she emptied those spools making their clothes through the years, many manufactured from bleached Robin Hood Flour sacks, her foot going great guns on the treadle of the old cast iron Singer machine. He envisioned its Art Nouveau trade mark spread like a frog, split four ways from a roll over a bank in moving down from the Cariboo and tied together with bailing wire. And he continued to saw - a little more each day.
He had found some pieces of three by three out there, some old cup hooks and eyelets, a little paint as well as nails and glue, and day by day he worked secretly before making the family porridge -- the doors of DeMan’s Store and Emporium had to be open at seven for the morning going-to-work trade. Daddy’s old saw was difficult and a vice was unheard of, so it was not too surprising that he slipped, ripping his left thumb badly through the nail, and had to stop to wind a strip of cotton around the wound. Ouch! That really hurt. Mercurochrome will help, he thought, dabbing on the red liquid.
And soon he had the pieces ready to paint and assemble. Well, not quite. There wasn’t really sufficient of any particular color so he had to mix what he had, though he kept the yellow pure for trim. All in all there were five cars, a caboose, and an engine with four spool-wheels on each side. All hooked together they made up a dandy train. "Wow! The Christmas Cannonball Express! Toot toot, choo choo choo. All aboard, leaving the station," he cried, so proud, so tall. Man oh man, will Marg be excited when she opens this on Christmas day, one of the few days
DeMan’s Government Street Store and Emporium closed so the family might relax and feast.
The anticipation was painful, but at long last Yule Morning arrived. Simultaneously Margaret and he opened each other’s presents. He watched and waited. Strangely she did not scream with gladness. "What’s this all here?" She began taking out the freight and passenger cars one by one, examining them and placing them beside her. "Oh, I see it’s some kind of construction thing."
Meanwhile he opened his gift from Marg. Sort of stringy. What in the world? Spools tied together with elastic? That looks like a face. He could see Momma and Daddy chuckling.
Marg spoke up: "You see last year I felt sad for you when I got Freddy and Martha, my wonderful puppet dolls, and you had to take a noisy old train that never ever stayed on track. I thought I’d make it up to you, so there is Billy for you; he dances and dangles and does really neat stuff, thanks to Momma’s spools, elastic, and left over wool. I even used some of that nylon thread that’s so precious." She smiled, "Well, aren’t you just delighted?"
They were all delighted upon what became one of the most memorable Christmas Days ever. Love is like that: bringing gladness in the most unexpected ways. And he never forgot the joy of that for the crosscut scar along his left thumb remains to this very day. He imagines engineer Billy, the spool puppet, yet drives that Christmas Cannonball chugging through misty canyons along gleaming steel rails of yesteryear.
Can’t you just hear that whining whistle blow? The hiss and the verberation of pounding wheels, the old conductor crying, "All aboard! Full steam ahead. Next stop, Happiness, Vancouver Island."
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