A Short Story…
For my birthday and Christmas, my wife had bought me a High Power 12×32 Binoculars with Camera and LCD Screen. Perfect for Bird Watching, but I’m not much into birds. She died a week before Christmas before I got the present. When I finally opened it, it made me cry. On her card she had written that she wanted me to enjoy the new “toy” as she called it.
The camera Binocular stayed in a drawer for six months or more before I finally pulled it out. It perked me up. Actually, I wanted it for taking photos of almost anything that moved or had been an eye catcher for years. I always loved trains, and so I made a trip to Centralia as my top target.
I rented a room by the freeway, and just began driving around. I parked in the heart of old Centralia and walked around the shops taking photos just to get the feel of the camera as well as the small town near Christmas time.
I talked to different people and then asked about few building owners if I could go up on their roofs to get a better view of the area. Everyone was so nice and just let me walk about and get some good angle shots. I began to see that getting the photos printed was going to cost sooo much more than the camera had to begin with.
I’ve always liked trains, so I kept an eye on both Amtrak and your basic trains transporting all kinds of oil, coal, and God knows what else. I got into a good position up on the roof of one of the buildings and could hear a well packed train approaching. It wasn’t going full speed, which was going to make a better target for me. My eyes shifted from the rear of the train to the head of the train . . . and that’s when I saw the elderly woman approaching the track. My eyes kept shifting back and forth from the woman to the head engine. I could see the engineer and could easily see than he was worried about hitting the woman as well.
The woman kept walking toward the track and pulling a little grocery cart with wheels behind her. It soon became apparent that she couldn’t see or hear too well. The people who had been standing watching the train were now watching the elderly woman who kept walking toward the tracks. There was no way anyone watching would be able to get to the woman. It was going to take a miracle.
The miracle didn’t happen. In an instant the train absorbed the elderly woman and she disappeared like she had been sucked into a hungry tornado. There was no scream from the woman, but there were from those who were privy to the event. The train kept moving down the track until it could come to a dead stop. Nothing moved under the engines, but the engineer and his helpers jumped down and went looking for the woman. There were pieces of the old woman, but not much more. It struck me that I must have gotten a number of shots with my new camera until I realized I had done nothing with it as the train rolled over the old woman.
The police wrote down responses by all that had seen the tragedy . . . and then it struck me that perhaps she had dropped the cart before she was struck. I told the police that I thought the cart might be about a hundred yards behind from where we all were and her purse must have been dropped at the same time she was struck.
We all helped out. I found the bag a good forty feet from the track in a blackberry patch. The police used a long pole to pull out the bag she was carrying. The bag was taken with the body.
In the bag was the note the woman had written in another language but Amtrak had it translated. “American seems so nice and friendly, but it doesn’t matter. I need to be with you.” I understood . . . I understood. I love that camera and will honor it for the rest of my life.
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