LJ Idol S5 Topic 12: My Favorite Story

The sky that day was dark and overbearing.  Thunderclouds had rolled in from the west and lightning streaked across the air.  The weather mirrored my mood as I sat in a passenger car of the Texas State Railroad.  The train had broken down earlier in the journey and I expected my arrival to be delayed.  Neither the gentle rocking of the train nor the quiet din of the car could calm my nerves.  I had to get to the station on time, had to make sure that he knew. 

Thunderclouds had rolled in that day from the west and lightning was streaking the sky.  The excitement was palpable, we had all just spent a day on Steam Engine 201 of the historic Texas State Railroad, rocking and rolling through the piney woods of East Texas, over rivers and streams, through small towns.  We were nearing the end of our mid-summer excursion, approaching the turn-of-the-century depot at Palestine, Texas.


As the train rolled through the last curve and headed towards the depot, despair washed over me as I searched the faces of the crowd from my seat at the window.  He was not there.  I was too late.  I had made a fool’s errand and this was my reward.  The locomotive slowly pulled into the depot, breathing for me, for I surely could not.  My heart was broken and I was going to just stay on the train and return to my quiet, safe life.

As the train rolled into the last curve and headed into the depot, a strange and intense feeling washed over me.  I had seen this picture before.  I had felt this feeling before.  I had been here before.  Something… missing?  Something… supposed to be here?  Where?  When?  How?

Through a blur of tears, I looked one last time at the depot before steeling myself and returning to my humble life.  That was when I saw him.  Walking out into the early twilight of a stormy evening, placing his hat upon his perfect head and striding to wait by the main entrance of the platform, looking as if he were prepared to wait for eternity.

Through a blur of tears, I felt joy and contentment.  Happiness leapt at me as I tried to take it all in.  The exact color of the clouds, a dark gunmetal gray.  The exact shape and architecture of the depot, a Victorian-era lodge and painted like an iced gingerbread house.  The flicker of the streetlamps in the looming storm.  The greenness of the leaves of the trees set against the darkening sky.  The electric, heavy feel of every breath.  The feeling of familiarity, of certainty, of rightness, of realness.

Iron and metal, wood and smoke, beams and stones gave me all of that.

Just as surely as the depot stood in 1917, it stands today.