Behind our house was a large, long cluster of trees. On the other side of the trees were railroad tracks. Whenever a train would go by we would stop whatever we were doing and run towards the tracks to get a close up look as the train passed by. It was a challenge to try to count how many cars the train was pulling or to make it to the tracks in time to see the engineer and have him blow the whistle just for you. For me, there were never enough trains and I could never run fast enough to get close as they rumbled along.
The trees in front of the tracks were a mixture of all kinds of trees, but there was at least one tree that was special. Every year it would grow nice big juicy yellow apples. I loved those apples. We would pick as many as we could carry and eat them on the way back to the house. I’ve had yellow apples since then, but they never tasted as good as the ones that grew by the railroad tracks.
Sometimes we would follow the tracks a few hundred feet west where we would come upon a mysterious building. The building was unpainted and appeared to be unoccupied, at least to a young boy’s eyes. It wasn’t very big and there never seemed to be anyone in it, yet there was evidence that people had been there. Peeking in the windows didn’t give us much information about who might have owned the building or frequented it. Outside of the building were some large metal barrels. Oil drums filled with thermometers, some broken, some damaged. We surmised that thermometers were manufactured inside this building and the defective ones were tossed into the oil drums for disposal later.
Being boys, my brothers and I took some of the thermometers, broke them and retrieved the mercury. Sometimes, we’d put it in a jar and watch it spin and split and come back together again. It was also fun to watch it wiggle in our hands or on a table. Of course we didn’t know then how dangerous this could be. Whatever the risk may have been, it doesn’t seem to have affected any of us.
Time trudges forward, sometimes so slowly we don’t notice the changes until we’ve been away and then return. Now, the railroad tracks are gone and an overgrown pathway of weeds consume the space they once took. The apple trees have long since died and been removed. The mysterious building with thermometers spilling out everywhere has been replaced by a larger building of some sort. No little boys run to the sound of a passing train, no apples wait for those willing to climb the tree and pick them, and no one living there today is even aware of what they are missing. Like so many other things of youth, the trains, apples, and mysterious buildings are gone now, and only memories remain.
