Not many nights ago, as I left my birdie bungalow after checking them all for the night, I could see in the western sky the lingering red glow of a beautiful sunset, showing well its reluctance to recede.
The silhouetted tree line scalloped the bluest of blue cloud-free sky. I grumbled to myself for having missed the beautiful fireball of the setting sun.
But when I looked east, it was like the rising Man in the Moon had heard my grunted grumblings as he directed his nightly travels up over the large hump-backed wooded area that corners the acres of our eastern back 40.
There it was, full-faced, looking down on me from high over the eastern tree line. It was trying to compensate for the beauty I’d lost from the fireball moments earlier by passing its reflection back to me here on earth. What it also did was bring back a flood of unforgotten, long-ago memories.
When I first met my Little Lady, we both lived on a dead-end street. I boarded across the narrow, short street from the house in which her family lived. The CNR tracks angled across, cutting off, as well as flanking the street to the south. A city block or two to the north angled the eastbound CPR tracks. Both were active, as neither had succumbed to the many reverted rail trails that have become so well known across the country today.
But these were the post-war have-not years of the early 1950s, when cars were few and extra change in the pocket was not there to jingle. And I dare say, these tracks, still well used by trains, were strolled on perhaps more often than the many converted trails of today. If they were a shortcut to anywhere, from point A to B, convenience dictated that they be walked on.
The Little Lady and I, like many others with no jingle in our jeans, ill affording the uptown entertainment, on moonlit nights would walk the CN rail tracks south for one or two miles and cross over to the CP to walk, hand-in-hand, the return trip home. Before crossing the high trestles at river crossings, we simply pressed an ear to the ribbon of steel to detect the rumble if a train was coming. No chances were taken; we simply waited if the rumble of one could be heard – which way or what speed didn’t matter – we waited and watched for its piercing headlight to show up one direction or the other in the distance.
Now, when I look up at this huge reflective rock in the sky, the humbling nature of which we don’t often stop to appreciate, I can’t help but wonder, if “the Man in the Moon,” by chance, had a video phone in likeness of today, how many intimate glimpses could he play back out to the people from these moonlight walks? Food for thought, don’t you think?
While you are thinking, folks, mark your calendar. The Saugeen Valley Fur and Feather Fanciers Association’s Spring Buy Sell Trade Day is at the Mount Forest Fairgrounds on April 28. It officially starts at 7am and winds up shortly after noon.
I’m hoping to be there with some of the offspring of my show bantams. See you there.
Take care, ‘cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105