The Red Train

Last year, I started living as a little retired man. I got myself one of those small fold up camping chairs and most weekends during the summer, I take my chair, the books I am reading, notebooks, and snacks, and head down the street from where I live to High Park. The chair and the snacks are the key thing here, as any retired person knows.

I walk through the woods, find a good spot and set up my chair. I’ll read a bit. Write a bit. Just sit and listen to the leaves gently rustle in the wind. Pack things up, walk a bit more, find another spot. You get the point.

I moved into this part of the city about a year ago. Before that, I was in an area that I will not name in case any readers live there. It was just really boring. All chain stores and clean-lined architecture. And the people? Even more boring. Let’s just say a lot of bros who wore suits during the days and backwards baseball caps at night. It felt very transient, like this was the last stop before leaving for the suburbs.

After moving, the biggest thing I realized I missed in a neighbourhood was the local characters. You probably know who I’m talking about. People you see all the time and who are a bit eccentric. The senior who always has an empty cart trailing behind her. She’s French and I’ve been taking lessons, so I practice conversing with her. The man in the fedora who is always smoking and is sometimes nice and charming, and sometimes a big time asshole. The guy who waits outside the same convenience store every morning waiting for it to open, shifting from one foot to the other like he’s about to make a drug deal, except he’s just waiting to buy a lottery ticket.

I take breaks during the work day at lunch to go for a walk. During my rounds saying hi to all the local characters, I started thinking about things from a different perspective. And later on when I took my little chair to High Park, the thought kept nagging away at me. In High Park, there is a little red passenger train (well, not really a train, but a small tractor disguised as a train) that makes laps of the park, picking up and dropping off people. Sitting on my chair, the small red passenger train went by and I thought: “That would be fun - circling the park driving a train and bringing people where they needed to go. Also, as the driver, you get to wear a fancy top hat.”

Then I thought about how I could toss my ‘hat’ in the ring and apply to be one of these conductors. I wouldn’t do it for the money, or for the glory, I’d do it for the freedom. And maybe after being the conductor on this train going round and round the park, one day I would just decide to keep driving. Drive out of the park and down the main busy street. On to the on ramp of the highway, and head south. Cross the border and just keep going. Drive straight across the United States and cross another border into Mexico and just keep going. And all along the way, I would continue to pick up passengers and take them to where they needed to go. And this is how I would spend the rest of my days, driving my little red train in the direction of nowhere, have no final goal, the only goal would be to keep going until I couldn’t go anymore.

Life goals.

Besides that, sitting in my chair I was also wondering about how maybe people are looking at me and thinking: “There he goes again with his little chair and his books and his snacks.” And then that train of thought went further: maybe I am turning into a local character? Maybe I am already a local character?

And you know, I am totally okay with that.