Train Shows & Guys
When they hit male menopause, some men buy a sports car, or a sailboat, or take off with a young woman named Amber. Others take the cheaper and more benign route: buy electric trains and go to train shows.
A local volunteer fire department held one Sunday and it was jammed, mainly by men who had Lionel trains as kids and have reverted to childhood—or never left it. Train shows are guy things, although a couple had wives in tow, their women looking as thrilled at looking at cabooses as their hubbies would be in a fabric store.
(One of the women may one day send the above message to her spouse.)
The room resembled a souk: venders, buyers, gawkers, tables laden with trains. Big trains, little trains, antique trains, new trains. You need a Lionel box car, or a Plasticville depot, or some extra wheels or track or an entire Pennsylvania Railroad passenger train?
Buddy, you have come to the right place.
I have long considered “jaw dropping” a literary exaggeration, like “unbelievable” and “bone weary” and women in Victorian-era novels blushing and fainting. No more. I bought nothing at the train show but told my wife I plunked down $225 for a long-coveted (by me) Santa Fe diesel locomotive.
And, oh yes, her jaw dropped.
Tim drew political cartoons for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for nearly 30 years. His work appeared in national newspapers, newsmagazines and on network television. He also paints and has drawn comic strips, written and illustrated a column and feature stories, and written one-act plays. And, he plays in a blues-zydeco band: piano and, uh... accordion.
