Patience is a Virtue

If you are ever on a train that is delayed by cattle crossing the tracks, do not attempt to hurry their progress with loud noises. In particular, do not take advantage of cannon being transported on the same train. An artillery engagement will cause the cattle to lurch forward, but the ordnance will lurch backward. The walls of train cars are not built to withstand heavy artillery; if they were then General Grant would have conducted his battles from the comfort of a caboose. If you do happen to exercise such an option, stand well away from either end of the cannon. Or better yet, be nowhere near it after you have lit the fuse.

Copyright © 2013 Laurie J. Anderson. All rights reserved.

"Mail Car" Max

Since I am well-travelled, I am often asked about the best routes to take. Sometimes I can oblige the individual with a knowledgeable response, and sometimes I tell him about "Mail Car" Max.

"Mail Car" Max was a medium-sized mutt of indeterminate ancestry who made his home at the railroad station in Yonkers, New York. Every morning he would hop on the 6:40 a.m. mail and freight train going due south to Fort Washington. There he would get off and relieve himself, then reboard and continue on to Brooklyn. In Brooklyn he would disembark once more and visit a local tavern, where he was given a bowl of beer and a sausage biscuit. After that he would take a nap. He always woke up in time to board the 2:10 pm westbound train, and returned travelling north by way of Hoboken to Fort Lee, where he completed a circle by taking a ferry back to the city.

Max was well known to all the porters, who documented his travels. When he wasn't sitting on a mail sack he often rode with the conductor, looking out through the foremost window.

Why didn't Max simply hop back on the northbound train to Yonkers for his return trip, in order to get home quickly? Why on earth did he go through New Jersey? Perhaps he preferred the view when crossing the Hudson River from the west to the east. Perhaps he felt he should comfort the porters who had to work in the Garden State. I do not know. The "best" route is sometimes a matter of personal taste, and there's no accounting for that.

copyright ©2011 Laurie J. Anderson, all rights reserved.

Texas Travel

You cannot cross Texas in less than a week. For one thing, the state is wider than four Eastern states strung together, and longer from north to south than six Sundays. For another thing, the storms out there are so fierce they keep moving the border. I once took a train from New Orleans to San Francisco, and outside of Abilene we ran into a cyclone so fierce that it pushed the city limits to the east side of the Mississippi. To make matters worse, the winds turned the tracks around, so the engineer had to run the train in reverse all the way over the Sierras. Even with Wizard Water^© in the boiler to speed things up, we didn't reach Sacramento until the previous Friday. I was early for an appointment, with no good excuse.

My pocketwatch ran backwards for weeks after that, too. It didn't start ticking forward until I visited Boston. Even then it moved about one minute for every five of actual time. They say that time stands still in Boston, but the truth is it just mimics what's happening in Congress.

copyright ©2011 Laurie J. Anderson, all rights reserved.

Blizzard in a Bottle

I remember the blizzard of ’88 – it arrived one afternoon in March just as I was bringing Bleb into the barn. It blew in so fast that his tail froze before he could get inside. It froze my shadow to the outside wall, too, and if there hadn’t been an axe nearby I’d have been there until spring. Luckily my wife had just burnt a pan of cornbread; I was able to pull myself into the house by grabbing the smoke that had drifted out of the kitchen window.

Now some folks think the storm of ’88 was just Mother Nature reminding everyone who was boss, but I believe it was caused by a misapplication of Wizard Water^©.

I am occasionally asked if Wizard Water^© can do anything about the weather. Of course it can. Fill a bottle with snow, add a few drops of concentrated Wizard Water^©, seal the contents tightly and store it in a dark place such as your root cellar. Come summer, tie the bottle to a kite. When the bottle is nearly out of sight, shoot it. The winds will scatter snow over the landscape below, and the summer heat will melt the snow into a welcome shower. The drawback to this is that you cannot always control where the rain will fall. I once tried selling this product to farmers as a weather aid, but after accidentally flooding a church decided not to pursue the matter.

However, early in the spring of ’88 I had not yet reached that conclusion, and sold a case of my product for weather-related purposes to an aeronaut. This gentleman made his living demonstrating feats of daring from a hot air balloon. He was tired of jumping from the balloon and hoped Wizard Water^© would lead to a safer and more lucrative source of income. The last I saw of him, he was eagerly filling bottles during a snow flurry and storing them in the basket of his balloon.

The blizzard hit just a week after I sold him the case of Wizard Water^©. The gentleman travelled from town to town in his balloon, the better to advertise his craft and gather a crowd, and I strongly suspect that he met with some misfortune while in the air. Perhaps a flock of geese upset the basket; perhaps the balloon’s kerosene stove exploded. Whatever occurred released an inordinate amount of concentrated, wind-infused snow and cold air into the atmosphere.

Folks still talk about that storm. If you were outside, your words would freeze as soon as they left your mouth. Rooster calls and dog barks were only audible at high noon when the sun defrosted things a little. Train whistles couldn’t be heard in a timely manner, so conductors had to signal their arrival with fireworks. The bursts stayed suspended in the air, though, and kept everyone awake at night. Milk cows started giving ice cream. We noticed a new eagle ornament atop the town hall but later in the spring it flew off. By the time I got inside our kitchen that afternoon, the chimney was so choked with frozen smoke that we had to use a shotgun to clear it out. The storm lasted for a week, and every few hours we’d have to clear out the chimney again. At noon the air was full of the sound of roosters, dogs, fireworks and gun blasts.

This is why I no longer advertise Wizard Water^©’s weather-inducing properties. I advise others against using it for such purposes, too. If you do, use it inside so as not to disturb your neighbors.

copyright ©2010 Laurie J. Anderson, all rights reserved.

A Cure for the Uncommon Cold

An uncommon cold is any cold that does not follow the usual course that a common cold follows. If you sneeze and have a sore throat, you have some form of the common cold. Treat it as I have earlier recommended. If you sneeze and have a sore throat, see purple spots swirling before your eyes and find yourself singing choruses of “Poor Wand’ring One”, you likely have an uncommon cold.

To treat the uncommon cold, give a quart of the purest distilled corn product you can get to the ornieriest beast you know – bull, goat, cowhand or mother-in-law – and lock yourself in a small room with the creature after he or she has swallowed the entire gift. Stay there for at least an hour, or until you feel your life is in danger. Upon your release you will have overcome the urge to sing annoying songs, be able to ignore spots of any temperament, and realize that there are worse things than having an uncommonly bad cold. Thus, you will feel much better. Alternatively, you can continue singing -- but be prepared to wake up in a mail sack hanging outside a train station.

copyright ©2010 Laurie J. Anderson, all rights reserved.