John Barton and I were talking the other day about the kind of world in which our children are growing up. We were lamenting the fact that there were so many things about which these kids would not know. To mention just a few. Did you ever spend a cold winter night on a farm, and off in the distance, when the night was dark and cold, you'd hear the whistle of a train, a long and lonely whistle that would trigger all kinds of wonderful dreams. You hear that lonesome wail as you snuggled deeper into the feather tick and you’d wonder where the train was going and what famous people might be aboard. Well, that great sound is gone forever. It has been replaced by something that could be a bus horn or a truck, a big ugly puff of sound that just hasn't the appeal of the old train whistle. John mentioned too that our kids have never seen a street car. That means they've never had the great fun of flipping trolleys. Boy that used to be our favorite outdoor sport up on 124th St. at 8th Avenue. All you had to do was pull the guy wire that was attached to the post supporting the trolley wires, and off would pop the trolley. Sounds silly now but it was great fun then. Oh – there are a lot of things our kids will miss, things like running boards where you could hang on while your dad drove the car at 10 miles an hour… rumble seats, where are you stay even if you froze to death… the friendly warm flicker of a coal oil lamp on your grandpa's farm… wind up Victrola's and open Tiger Moth airplanes where you could actually SEE the pilot and you'd always wave but he’d NEVER wave back. Yes… these things our kids will never know. Somehow today I get the feeling that everything is moving too fast… or am I just slowing up.
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