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Train Revives Childhood Memories

A train track runs through the Rock River Valley below my house, and a couple of times a day a short train rolls through. Sometimes, just the engine, a red one, chugs by.

When I hear the train coming I yell, “Chooch!” and my four-year-old daughter Iris puts down her book and comes running. Then I scoop her up, and we run out to the edge of the yard, where we can look down through the trees at the red engine.

We wave at the engineer, and yell, “Hi Chooch,” but the engineer never sees us.  He does give a little toot when he crosses Bass Creek Road.

We have a family history with the railroad. My dad, who died five years ago, worked 46 years for the railroad. Iris never met her grandpa, but she knows he used to drive trains. These old diesel engines last so long, I think, he could have driven this very one.

One of the best days of my life occurred when I was in kindergarten, a year older than Iris is now. I was on the way to school when the school bus stopped at the train crossing on Highway 72 west of Kirkland and waited for the train. When the train rolled through the intersection, the engineer leaned out the window and gave us a long, slow, looping wave.

The engine was black and orange, and that waving engineer was my dad.  I let all the kids know it. I don’t think I’ve ever been as popular, for a single day in my life, as I was that day.

Earlier this spring Iris and I ran to see Chooch and, after our salute, we lingered there watching the red engine disappear into the woods. I was still holding Iris when she said, “It’s Grandpa. He’s coming pick us up.”

I’m Chris Fink, and that’s my perspective.

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