A Train Dream
Yeah, I know what train dreams supposedly signify in some circles. This is different. Also, this isn’t about the rock group called Train.
I was high on a hillside. Turning, I looked left over my shoulder and down into a green valley. As I further turned and looked, I saw a city in the green valley. Blmues and silver dominated the city. While I watched, moving closer, I understood that they were trains. What I had first thought of as a network of roads were trains. Trains were going in every direction, at different levels in a beautifully synchronized dance. Most trains were short, with a stubby engine and then two or three long cars, but some trains were ten to twelve cars in length. None seemed like a super train.
For a period, I just watched the trains, getting a feel for their travel, seeing how none touched the ground, that there were no tracks, that areas were set up where the trains stopped, how they didn’t have wheels.
Then, I was down close to the trains, moving toward my train. I knew that no one owned any land. We all lived in trains and stayed on the move. Some trains were full of extended families. You bought an engine and car and added on as the family grew, even incorporating businesses into your train.
Then, dream shift, my wife and I exited our train. It was day, a little cloudy. We were on muddy lowlands by a beach. The tide was out. We planned to go tide pooling. But large black rocks stole my attention. Going up a hill, I discovered it the rock was a statue. More dotted the land. Ah, we’re on Easter Island, I understood.
I hurried back down the hill to tell my wife. She was milling along the beach. Other trains and people had arrived. I recognized my wife’s brother-in-law and snuck up on him, surprising him. We were up on a slight elevation, looking down, where his wife and son were. His son’s wife wasn’t there, but my late mother-in-law was. All of them were not far away from their train, a small, beige engine with a single, short beige car. I said to him, “Oh, you brought all of them with you.”
He didn’t reply, and then I was down by my wife and my train. The train was a pretty chrome blue, very new and sleek. I walked along it, smiling and looking around as I thought, “This is going to take me a long way.”
Then I stopped and faced the choppy waters of a dark blue sea.
Dream end.
An Easter Memory
Preparing for an Easter brunch with friends prompted my neurons to pull up a memory. I was young, in my crewcut years. Honing in on the period, I was living in Wilkinsburg, PA, attending Turner Elementary School on Laketon Road, and going to my grandparents’ house in Irwin for Easter. So, it was 1964 and I was seven going on eight.
Dad was in Turkey or Greece on military assignment. He and Mom were divorced, and she was now a single mother working as a Bell Telephone operator, raising me and two sisters. I was the middle in this child sandwich. Mom and my Dad’s parents coordinated an Easter visit, probably so Mom could work the holiday and get the extra pay. She went all out that year, buying us new Easter clothes. It was a suit for me – blue and cream houndstooth jacket with a smart dark blue vest which matched my dark blue pants. I wore a clip-on tie. Black and white photographic evidence exists somewhere, but they’re in boxes on shelves in the garage that require an expedition along the lines of an archaeological expedition looking for a lost civilization, so it’ll need to hold for another day. On that Easter morning, we found three enormous baskets waiting for us. We were spoiled children, so there were large chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, peeps, marshmallow eggs, hard-boiled eggs which we’d dyed the day before, and a large coconut chocolate egg, all in pink, yellow, and green baskets with fake green grass made out of fine, shiny plastic. After discovering our baskets, we hunted for eggs around the apartment and then dressed in our new duds. My Uncle Bill, Dad’s youngest brother, picked us up in his brown Plymouth Fury and conveyed us to grandma and grandpa’s where we dined with all the area aunts, uncles, and cousins. Grandpa prepared his favorite, a ham. He baked one whenever he had a chance. (Uncle Bill would trade in that Fury in a few years and buy a year-old dark green Dodge Charger that had me and my friends drooling on its vinyl bucket seats. It was such a cool car.)
Mom joined us after dinner. The adults told us to go play or watch television while they gathered in the dining room for card games, focusing on the traditional family favorite, Tripoli. They were all smoking back then – Pall Mall, Lucky Strike, Kent, Kool. Several adults enjoyed beer such as American lagers like Iron City and Stroh’s, but whiskey sours were also very popular.
Yes, it’s my favorite memory. Smelling a Pall Mall or one of those other cigarettes whisks me right back there. It’s rare that such smoke touches my nose in these days. As for those beers, I found them light and tasteless. Over in Japan, I often indulged in beer from Australia and New Zealand. In Europe, I drank whatever was brewed in that country, but they had some excellent offerings everywhere. By the time I returned to the US, the craft brew industry was booming.
Today, though, brunch with friends outside, with the sun shining and laughter ringing across the yard, will be another favorite memory. Another favorite, but of another kind. Nobody smoked cigarettes. No alcohol was consumed. A potluck brunch, salmon was served with grilled asparagus along with several sorts of potato dishes, delicious quiches, fruit salad, and cinnamon muffins.
It’s a long, long way from Pittsburgh, PA, in 1965 to Ashland, OR, 2022.
Ah, Another Military Dream
I was a younger man, actually my age when I retired from the military in RL. I was dressed in a common uniform of the day, the woodland camouflage battle dress that I often wore.
I’d been invited back for a visit. In most of my assignments, contact was limited to a dozen people in a unit; I worked in a command post, one to three people to a shift, locked in a vault-like space. No windows, one door, eight to twelve hours a shift. People weren’t allowed in without proper clearance, previous approval, and a reason to be there. We were often armed, in case someone who didn’t fit those parameters broke in.
But there was one unit where I worked regularly with aircrews, the training staff, admin, etc. Everyone had access to me, and me to them. This was the unit where I felt closest to my co-workers.
These were the people I was back visiting. We’d been a covert intelligence unit back in the day, but the Berlin Wall fell, the USSR collapsed, and our mission ended. I went back to the US to Space Command. Many in that unit went on to special ops, gunships, or on loan to do drug interdiction on behalf of the DEA. It was this last that was going on in the dream.
We were outside in a large field. I was back by special invitation to watch a military operation, and people from then were back by invitation to see me. Several came back and told me what they’d done since we’d last seen one another thirty years ago. One of the last, Capt. Z, said, “I think it’s time for me to go.” He was hesitant to speak. I said, “No, you’re too young. You still have more to give.”
He shrugged. “I think it’s time. I don’t have a choice.”
He left. The operation progressed. An officer said, “Now Priscilla will explain how the unit coordinates with other agencies to intercept and track illegal drug activities.” Priscilla began leading several squadrons of personnel in military uniforms across a wide street.
As I watched that, I realized that it was Priscilla, a RL friend from my current era, a college professor who had never been in the military. I thought, why is she here?
Dream end.
Michael Seidel, writer 