Oh to be here. Train from Elmira to Chicago and then another for home. Nurse in tow but a husband that has to work. Better, in a way, Mother not being that fond of him and he not liking hiking out at the house in Buffalo Creek. Good at making money and all that but not an outdoor kind of fellow though one who always looks swell in a Brooks Brothers shirt.
But all right. Both boys in the bottom bunk and nurse in the top. Old enough they are. Not like the last time. Only one but that one but still nursing and having to be all together.
No, grown-up time this way and a break in the club car and visit with the other ladies. All from out West not East, they are. Funny. So many going out there to the consumption places you’d think there’d be one or two. Must be running their own trains. Not like those trips to go grandparent visiting on Lake Erie when school got out. No, people hacking up and down the car and mother with endless masks and fretting.
A day out of Chicago and another one or two but worth it. Fresh air to breathe that gets cold at night and no lakes for people to try to make someone swim in. No, too many lakes now and no mountains.
But still. Happy and a memory. . . enough money to come every other year and a sister to love . . .all that counts. . .
This is not my story. It is, rather, the story of my grandmother Genevieve P. New York born she was raised in Denver but married a fellow New Yorker and so would take her boys on the train west to visit her family every few years.