Weekend Report III

I called Mama to wish her a happy birthday this morning. I didn't ask, but I assume she is still 49. Seems to me when I turned 50, she told me I had passed her.

On the critter front, a flock of ten wild turkeys prowled around the backyard and by Tom's end of the house for a while this morning. Eventually they flapped their wings and scuttled off into the woods, although we never saw what startled them. Both cats were asleep in my room at the time, so it wasn't them. All these turkeys were big enough to swallow one of the cats whole, so I don't think as such they would have been too frightening.

The event of the day was the Holiday Train, a project of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Holiday Trains, decorated with thousands of Christmas lights, run in partnership with the Canadian Association of Food Banks and U.S. food collection agencies to raise donations and awareness for the issue of hunger. All the food and money raised stays in the local community.There are two trains, one in Canada and one in the States. The American train visits forty communities in seven states. There is musical entertainment, a chance for kids to visit Santa and food tents. The project began in 1999, but last year was the first time it stopped in the Dells. They raised over 2,200 pounds of food and $7,400 in cash donations.

Tom's work with the Riverside & Great Northern Railway (a non-profit preservation society nearby that focuses on small trains built for places like zoos and fairs)) got him hooked into volunteering to be part of the security for this event, mainly to keep crowds of children off the tracks. I agreed to help out, too, but mostly I just wandered around and did whatever the organizers asked me to do.

The good news was that the predicted snow did not turn into anything. The bad news was that, although we had to be there at 2:45, the train was not scheduled to arrive until 6:15. Santa arrived earlier, and the local school bands and choir and a couple of other entertainers sang to fill in the time. It was a very nice, small town Christmas event. The train itself was lovely, looking like something out of a movie (or, as I told Tom, out of a Coca-Cola commercial), and the entertainment was good. People who had been there last year said this year's crowd was smaller, last year having been warmer. Still it was a good experience. I hope they did well with donations.

And I think my feet will probably thaw out within the week.