35 - I saw another train with soldiers.
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I was sitting down by the railway tracks the other
day, playing checkers with Del and listening to my
new radio, and also watching trains because I like
looking at trains. You know, they are probably
about the biggest thing most of us will ever see
moving on the earth. But there's less coming
through here now than there used to be.
And then one finally comes, and it is another of
those soldier trains. It has these short
half-height sides, but with gaps between the
boards on the side panels, like a chopped cattle
car. Over the short sides you can see the
soldiers sitting on row benches, and they have on
these weird baggy grey fatigues. And they got
these ventilator marks, the kind with canisters in
the front. We can see some of them are already
wearing them. And then there are a bunch of these
super tall totally black box cars, and then some
flatbeds with what might be machines on them, or
big vats, or something. But they have them wrapped
in tarps so we can't tell. And we kind of just
watch as all this goes by and disappears.
I don't know what they are. I haven't seen one in
a couple of years, but I first saw one maybe
almost 10 years ago by now, probably. And it seems
like a pretty unusual thing, something that you'd
hear about what it was, maybe even in the
news. But I never heard anything, and no one knows
anything, and that's the weirdest thing about it.
The person on the radio starts talking about
interesting things you can add to your cocoa, and
they're going to take some calls now. And then a
crow poops on our checkerboard, which is kind of
gross, but that's just part of playing checkers
outside.
