Train Show

We went to a model train show in November. Mainly, okay, soley for Owl Jr.'s benefit. It was at the local community centre, the gym which usully holds weekend warriors doing some approximation of a team sport they had done decades ago in highschool playing host to enthusiasts of recreating some aspects of industrial-era mass transportation infrastructure.

The hobbyists are nearly exclusively old men with beards wearing engineer's caps. Train engineer caps, to be precise. (I'm not sure if other engineers (mechanical, electrical, chemical, etc) have hats, although that could only be a boon to recruiting new blood. Just think, a solid iron baseball cap with oversized rivets for mech engies, a erlynmeyer flask breeding a hardy yeast species for industrial bread making for bioresource engineers, the mind staggers.) And some a bit younger folks who would not look amiss at a convention featuring dragons and swords and possibly magic. My kin, if you will. Or kin from a long forgotten arm of the family that has taken residence in some earthy, unmentionable region of the Appalachians.

There are gauges, as I understand it, different scales and rails and eras and whatnot. Large trains, small trains, mini-trains. There was even a Lego railway. Quite well done too, many almost recognizable buildings and intricate switchbacks, or,whatever you call those things (I was not into trains in any way, apparently).

Interestingly, Owl Jr. wasn't captivated by the Lego ones -- which I imagine the real hobbyists sneer at, you don't spend 8 hours in the workshop faithfully reproducing a 19th Century North Hampshire farmhouse to have some upstart do the same in 30 minutes with a few woodgrain decaled plastic bits --  he was interested in the intricate ones, the more ancient locomotives, that had lots of pistons and drive-shafts and bit and pieces moving. He also seemed to be into the scenary, which I imagine is at least half the job of these model trains. Tunnels, mountain ranges, trees, these were all appreciated. Factories, warehouses, even a dock were stared at for uncomfortable amounts of time.

The tricky bit was trying to avoid being engaged by the hobbyists, because I knew less than nothing and had no inclination to learn more. And while I can feign interest in things, it does tend to suck up my dwindling supply of energy which was being used up at the time holding a two year old at shoulder height so he could see all the action.

As a PC gamer, I'm all too aware of the pain of being interested in something that most people find childish, regressive, or perhaps even a little bit nerdy. I didn't want to get any of the vendors hopes up that I'd be soon recreating the splendour of a small coal mining concern in 17th century Newcastle.

But Owl Jr. was happy, Owlet was led back up to the library ages ago, and at the very least I got a pretty decent shoulder workout and the beginning designs for a Programmer's Hat.

Pumpkin Patch

In October (yes, I take a while to get back to posts I start), we went to a pumpkin patch to get our gourd for Halloweeen. If don't know, pretty much any large event that might bring families are large, commercial affairs. Trinkets and goodies of questionable healthiness are sold in every sodden mud-caked square inch of field. There are local bands who butcher rock classics to include the word 'pumpkin'. No, I will not regale you with titles. Let's just say it's like having your nostalgia regurgitated through the candy-corn-crusted nether regions of a gourd from camp hell. It's not a pleasant experience.

It was quite an event. There was mud, and mud on mud, and dirt that looked somewhat dry and not hazardous but just turned out to be convincingly light-coloured mud. There were also corn-mazes, because if there is anything you want to do on a cold October day, it's to get lost in rows upon rows of cow-grade maize and endless trails of, well, mud.

During our tousle getting out the door, we forgot Owlet's proper wet gear. So in the drizzle, we had to assemble a Frankensteinian abomination of Owl Jr's clothes, some stuff left in the drunk, and a small but unwieldy umbrella; it might have been fashioned after a frog. And that's when it hit me, or was reinforced, as I gazed at our friend's children, who were wearing matching yellow slicker of some sort, how much children's fashion isn't so much about looking stylish, at least, for most parents; but more about ensuring your child doesn't look like an unamusing, tragic extra from Oliver!, which Owlet surely did.

It's not like she cared, she just wanted to get going. Going to whereever we were going to run too fast and get ridiculously dirty and have her parents freak out as new parents always do. The thing about dirty kids, is yes, on one hand, let kids be kids and get rough and tumble; but on the other hand, when all they have to get to is the car, they act as these impressive dirt multipliers, getting more things dirty that will surely have to be cleaned faster than you can repeat "OH GOD PLEASE DON'T TOUCH THAT". For me, it's not so much the fact of a dirty child. If she doesn't care, I don't. It's just the eventual time sink of trying to clean from our cloth and pleather seats something that looks like a cross between regurgitated grass and sculpting clay.

Or maybe I'm just a very prissy father, whatever.

During the course of wandering the mud fields looking for the right pumpkin, I saw a bunch of workers drive in a tractor, and unload pumpkins. Because we were in a mud field, not a pumpkin patch. The real pumpkin growing was done in some off-site lot, or imported from Argentina, or grown in a sinisterly lit warehouse with steel drum vats with supervisors who's middle name was 'von'. Or maybe I'm getting my imagination into overdrive because pumpkin-fueled family cheese can only push a man so far.

At some point, the kids were led to a straw field where they threw straw at each other and got the sort of dirty I can get behind, non-transferrable. I took many shots, and eventually got a keeper. So I guess the trip wasn't all bad.

Halloween

Thanks to Xian Pitt for the photo.

Thanks to gregodactyl for the topic. Not edgy and reeking of whatever the hipster-literary elite take for 'funny', but a solid topic.


It's hard not to get nostalgic about Halloween. Wait, not nostalgic, what's that other thing? Diabetic shock.

Well, ok, and nostalgic.

Halloween is a bloody great holiday. A truly kids holiday. Staying out late in the dark, wearing costumes meant to maximize pedestrian danger, and all to get candy. Remember when it was all the rage to dress as a ninja? Black mask, black top and pants, running around with swords? How did any child make it through that not shot or with a large American auto-maker's logo embossed on their forehead?

And the loot! Those candy corns and related sweets that one ate only at Halloween. The McDonald's coupons for a free cone that you swear that this year, you are sooo going to use. The mini-candy bars that tasted somehow entirely different from just a small bite from a bigger bar. The Holy Grail, the full-sized candy bars given out, invariably, by the rich, childless couple at the end of the street with the impossibly long drive-way, who were always in Europe, and just set out the candy bars on an 'honour system'. You can tell they both neither had children and don't remember the 'Lord of the Flies' power struggles that arise around free candy.

It's also about danger. Superstitions and evil and so forth. Death and skeletons and zombies oh my! The Occult! Some of the more bloodthirsty druids! Witches, but not like the friendly Wiccan down the road with the sleep apnea, chronic fatigue, and adult onset diabetes. Witches as they were meant to be. Hungry for children! Cauldrons!

I get sucked right back into my childhood when Halloween rolls around. The somehow eternally morose Charlie Brown specials with the Great Pumpkin really gets me in the mood. (What was it about smooth jazz in the 80's? It seemed to be everywhere. Mr. Rogers, Peanuts, Safeway. Which for the adults, I guess, made it really modern and cool, but to me as a kid, made me consider 'depressing' a musical genre).

Our neighbourhood had everything that is necessary for a true Americana Halloween. The Neighbour Who Hated Children (possibly beat them or shot at them with some sort of home-made riot gear), the Older Cool Kids Who Owned A Datsun, the Ultra Mean Dog That You Swear You Heard From Your Best Friend's Uncle Ate A Kid a While Back.

Legends.

All things in childhood becomes iconic, totemic, the base from which all other experiences become allegorical to. Cool is only experienced as a mere flutter of how cool it was when The Older Cool Kid With The Datsun took off one side of his walkman for the half-second it took him to look at you with mild recognition and say, 'Hey'. Fear as only a shadow of that insidious, slithering thing that crawled in your belly when you looked up the driveway to the Neighbour Who Hated Children. Greed as a mere whisper of the sensation you got holding an entire pillow case chock-full of enough candy to shut down the pancreases of twelve grown men.

And no holiday will ever be as cool, indulgent and opulent as Halloween. Looking cool in a sick Darth Vader costume, while in constant danger from whatever terrors the neighbourhood provides, to say nothing of the serial killer they say once lived a week and a half in Mr. Henderson's shed; the promise of more and more candy; the almost freedom of running around in the dark with friends.

God, being an adult really sucks.