Yeah — and Another Thing!

How did you count the cars in a train?

Were they all coal gondolas or grain? Did one of you count the boxcars and another count the rest?

Did you take the first 50 then hand off to your friend? Did you count it all together and average your results? Or take the highest number and write it on a wall? Were your trains a mile long? Or two? Did they hoot just for you? Did they shake the ground you stood on? Did the diesel roast your shorts? Did it shriek the bridge to pieces?

Did you count the engines?

As soon as we could stop shouting the numbers, we disagreed about that. Engines were not cars, yet it seemed unreasonable to ignore a two or a five when you were heading for a record. The loudest engines-in argument came from the same gang that squashed nickels. We sacrificed our pennies to the 10-ton wheels and hid the copper leafs before going in for supper.

Where to begin? Software developers often like zero, rocket launchers like a pre- and post-event count. Musicians like four and another. Biographers usually write in the grandparents. Historians just jump in and explain later. Compared to which the story-teller’s “Once upon a time” seems, if not rational, at least integral.

My doctors prefer the launch metaphor. My official transplant count began at -6 and gathered speed along the number scale, rolled right through zero before racing to the 100 horizon. So, “100 Days in Omaha” could have been “106 Days in Omaha” — well, 107.

But the process really started with my brother Donald, his arrival in Nebraska and hospital preparations, mine and Karen’s presence at those events, and the inevitable etceteras that attend them. That would have meant, roughly speaking, “114-maybe-115-or-so Days in Omaha”. And then came the unexpected news that we were paroled for good behavior. Our conditions included a weekly Omaha meeting with a parole officer, and we were to live in a neighborhood where raw salads would not be a daily temptation. That would be Des Moines. We were no longer “in Omaha”.

You start off thinking it’s going to be simple. You might even think you know the ending. But we live in a Post-Caboose World. The train never really ends. It just isn’t there.