“Little red caboose, chug, chug, chug…

Little red caboose, chug, chug, chug…

Little red caboose — behind the train, train, train, train…

Coming down the track, track, track, track…

Smokestack on its back, back, back, back…

Little red caboose behind the tra-a-a-ain…”

A precious memory: On August 21, 1954, my parents were at the door, eagerly waiting to give their only (ever) four-year-old grandson Billy his birthday present, a small plug-in electric record player and a big stack of children records.

We, as his parents, thought it was a much too expensive and complicated gift for a child his age and were quick to say so. But just as quickly we were outvoted. They knew better, they said.

It took him less than a day and a half to figure out how to make it work, and not much longer to figure out which record was going to be his very (ever) favorite. The record player, like they all three now, is no longer with me. But the special record is, not that I need it to remind me of how the song goes…it has not been played since that long ago time. If I want to hear it again, I will need to put it on a modern day turntable, but I don’t need to.

In 2021, I can still hear the song in my head, not as often, of course, but just as it sounded then: over and over and over… day after day…Sigh!

I’d say to Billy, “I won’t be able to forget that song; stop playing it.” But that was then and now it is…now.

If you thought I was not going to write a column this month you were as close to being right as you could ever have been. Even I was not sure what I wanted to do.

You see — it has become more and more apparent I need to decide if I should continue to accept or if I should reject the commonly proposed idea there is always going to be a lot of differences occurring between and/or during the ‘now and then’ times of our lives.

As I cautiously suggested in my December 2020 column there might be a bigger possibility that ‘same’ or ‘like’ things can often prove of better value than those things which are considered ‘opposite’ or ‘different’ — that many things can really remain forever as they were.

And, lastly, there are my mother’s songs she used to sing when I was a child. I can recall some of the words, but not all of them, on any certain day. When I do remember them, I can hear her singing them as if it were now.