Dream Train

On the night train to Madison from Chicago, Heather Lee hopped on just to get away from the small town and school. It was not expensive at all and a welcome escape.
There was State Street, a Bohemian pre-college kid’s paradise. There were dangly earrings, Persian rugs, dashikis, astrological posters, and at that point in time, record albums for the high price of $3.50. This was still a lot for a teenager to fork out. The cool thing was to park herself in a “listening room” to preview it and to hear the best of folk.
Closer to the railroad track, she could pick up thinks like chocolate covered ants and sneezing powder, with which to purposely inflict her sinuses. She did not realize that at some later date, that would be the last sensation she’d want.
The train brought other things throughout her waning high school experience.
There would be a first guitar, ordered from Montgomery Ward for $16.00, still a lot for a teenager working part time and hoping to go to college. The strings were steel and would cause finger calluses like the later and better Spanish guitar would not. But this instrument was precious, because it was the first.
Then, the train brought a canvas on which to do oil paintings. “I’ve got my board!” she screamed with delight, confusing her male friend as to what that meant.
Later, during college years, the train would bring her college friends returning home from Europe, who'd journeyed about on a motorcycle. One friend had accumulated over 25 pounds, because of sporadic eating between starvation times and provision times.
Later, instead of making trips from her small town to Madison, she took the route from Chicago to her hometown.
There, she was trying for theater experience. Both the theater experience and the train ride seemed longer, rougher than expected for a small town/country girl. Even the small college experience she'd agreed to was located in a similar setting under the same church and ethnic umbrella.
She could understand what one of her college friends, who’d traveled Europe, meant by “culture shock”.
This time, her hometown was a welcome respite from the hustle and bustle of city life. It was not a place to escape from, but a haven to return to.
The dream had to be revised. Happiness was not someplace else.
So now, the train stops in Chicago. The hometown depot is now a Chamber of Commerce, especially active during the annual festival. She has to take the ferry to bus, or train to bus connection, depending on whether she has to take the short or long route.
It’s harder to get to the place she’d tried to leave, but that place would always be in her heart.

A Light on Her Majesty

As the top, circular steps to the top of the lighthouse became visible in the blinking moonlight, Chelsea headed hesitatingly toward the stairway.
She had heard reports that the place was haunted. Yet, as a reporter for the new Great Lakes Newsletter, her curiosity regarding the lighthouses and ships on the Great Lakes pushed her forward.
It was nearing 11 p.m., and she heard the small ferry. It beeped its tiny horn at length and far away, and announced its entry into the channel.
But, as she began to climb up the steps and reach the top, she heard a deeper, louder blast which did not fit this time period.
She gazed out the top window of the lighthouse. Off in the distance, on the on-and-off visible horizon, was a Great Lakes Ship she’d thought was non-operational, moored in the west end of the harbor.
But there the ship was; there she wasn’t; there she was…not, and there she was again, surrounded by night fog. The ship proceeded forward in majesty: the Queen of the Great Lakes, able to handle high waves, crossed slowly and deliberately toward the shoreline, cut slowly but surely through the choppy waves.
Lights shone through the windows; big band music came from the bar and dance hall, laughter from the dancing pairs. People peered out from the decks; children climbed up the stairs to higher levels to observe the channel and their entry into the channel, lit by small pilot boats and curiosity cabin cruisers that were there to greet and to follow. Families, after resting, spilled out of the berths with their baggage. The women all wore dresses, hair neatly coiffed and sprayed, shoes heeled, while the men wore hats and suits. All encased themselves in coats and jackets to keep out the chilly air of Lake Michigan.
Chelsea gazed from the lighthouse. The noise died down once again.
The ship faded in the fog. Once again, Chelsea heard the deep, loud blast, only this time, from the moored ship behind her. The ship was a shell of its former self, but she announced, “hello” to the little ferry boat entering the port for the first time, from the great ship’s original home in Milwaukee.
The old ship, who’d made many trips from the same Wisconsin Port, handed over the Lake to the smaller, faster ferry boat with its tiny horn, as it made its higher, softer, lengthy be-e-e-p.
As you surrender Your Majesty, Oh Queen, Chelsea thought, we will never forget your many voyages and the memories of those whom you carried across the Lake and Channel to the port in Michigan.
In our hearts, at least, and with gratitude, long lives the Queen.

Revered Research

I'd heard the author of A Taste of Honey was only 18 years old. Well, I was 14, so there was still a chance for authorship. How is it she could make it as an author, and I wasn't there yet?
My parents had been talked into what had been considered the very best encyclopaedia, The Encyclopaedia Brittanica.
They wanted nothing but the best when it came to educational materials.
The great thing about getting this set was the company was willing to send information about a specialized subject if you requested it.
I wanted to write an historical fiction like Gone With The Wind that I'd read with a flashlight late into the night. I was not thinking about what that could do to my eyesight later, since I was obviously really into it.
So, I wrote in for and about a period of American History that had fascinated me, Salem. The information came in an 8 X 11 inch pamphlet, and I got to work with 2 fictional characters (admittedly, with a strong resemblance to Scarlett and Rhett) planted in the Eastern Seaboard during the early colonial period.
I typed on the manual typewriter at home. The advanced electric typewriter was a school business class thing. I used correct type and white out for corrections. Sometimes, I used onion skin paper, which made erasures easier.
In the age of internet information, these researches seem long awaited, and procedures seem primitive. But I remember making do and even being excited at getting the information. It was information I'll always remember, because I'd incorporated it into my YA novella, and it was knowledge I could never again take for granted.

Poetry Presenter

The reflection in the still pond was red gold, like the sunset. Finally, the blizzards were over, and the world had become "puddle wonderful," as the poet* wrote.
Poetry...Where did it begin, and how long had it been since I'd picked some up to read? It had inspired me as a teen every night...to read, then, to write. I studied the different meters in my English class under my favorite teacher from the University next door.
But it really hadn't begun there. It had begun in the northern part of the state in a fifth grade I wasn't very interested in, under a teacher I didn't like particularly. But still, this teacher brought in a speaker from the area, Eugene Field's daughter. She was really old, (or so I thought then) but when she read some of her father's poetry,

"Little Boy Blue"

in a melodic, poetic delivery,

"Winken,Blinken,and Nod"

and what each one of those names meant; I was captivated.
It didn't stop there. In sixth grade,

"Old Quinn Querebus, he loved his garden so...He wouldn't eat his growing things, he only let them grow."*

I had a teacher I really liked with a split room, so I buckled down to work. And there was that beautiful, colorful language, ending, "I wash my hands in red gold of pools..."* I was hooked on poetry for life.

*e.e. cummings *authors unknown

Life Cycle

Straining against the wind to reach the top of the dune, the winter was beginning to set in. They had gone on countless hikes there. Each time, she had gazed across the great lake longingly, but this time, even more so. The wind’s sharp knives cut a dagger through her heart.
She identified with the Selkie woman, who’d shed her skin to live on land, but could never shed the feeling of displacement.
Across the lake was her other home. This other home was probably no better than the life created here. In fact, in some ways, parts of that other home were more backward, yet coexisting with parts that were more forward looking, much like here.
Her eyes scanned the gray skies, soon to turn to dusk. What she saw was a little disconcerting. Gray, round heads looking as thought they were doing breaststrokes toward her.
Then, she began to wonder and to remember. The gray heads took off their headgear by pulling them up over their faces and backward, revealing long tresses with garlands of multicolored flowery seaweed.
She sat on the rock in a forward-gazing yoga-like pose.
“Darlene!” one of them called out, “you’ve been gone too long. It was Muriel’s turn several years ago!”
Then, she heard many voices cry out, “Darlene, Darlene, Darlene!”
She cupped her ears with her hands and squinted her eyes shut. These were no Selkies; these were Mermaids…Mermen,too, but then, there was no such thing as either one.
However, she began to remember. She felt a strange tug at her feet; her feet were melded together. She couldn’t move them one at a time. She was crippled, no longer able to walk, stride, and above all, hike on those long summer excursions.
One blond and powerful maid came forward to visit her, sitting on the rocks.
“Darlene, you’re not being very fair, you know. Everybody gets to take his or her turn. Muriel’s been waiting a long time. By now, you’re probably so adjusted to land, you’ve forgotten us and your old ways, singing in our churches, eating our food, painting flowers from the bottom of the sea, farming the ocean floor.”
Tears streamed down Darlene’s face: Of Course, of course, but she thought those memories were on the land across the lake, the large cities and small towns reflecting varied motherlands and customs.
“Come on, now, Darlene,” said the blond one “You’ve got to leave all you’ve built up here, all the relationships, and go home.”
“You mean, to die?”
“Only to a place you’d agreed you’d never stay. Die to that, perhaps.”
The mermaids and mermen surrounded her on the rocks.
Muriel called out, “Did you have a good time, Darlene?”
She thought, “Oh, I wouldn’t have traded my life here for all the world, but some of those times were very, very hard.”
“Well, no matter what happens there, I still want to go,” Muriel insisted, “I have the next chance, and I’m going to take it!”
The blond one whom she’d recognized from her life before, Angela, tugged at her, and she automatically, with the skill of her flipper, dived in, meeting up with and surrounded by many she’d known and loved before.
She thought she heard something like a baby’s cry; it was just Muriel, breaking her flipper encasement becoming…human.
“See you, Muriel,” they cried out, “have a wonderful adventure! Just don’t forget us and your real home.”
Muriel blinked and looked at her new bright setting with wonder. She looked as though the Mer-people were no longer in her line of vision.
Already, she was beginning to forget.