What Happened on that Train

     When I knew him he was just my uncle.

     He was Uncle Morty.

     Morty who worked on the New York Times weather map and made those dopey movies of us kids climbing out of the cardboard box.  My mother’s sister’s husband.  My cousin’s father.  It never hit me that he was a guy who had a life before the family, outside of his uncle-ness so to speak; a man in his own right with a past of exploits.

     This is why that photo of him as a young man, much younger in it than I was looking at it, seemed warped and wrong.  Here was Morty full of youth and yip, shooting craps on the street, with his whole future ahead of him, no trace of the family in sight, nor the illness or the pension or the long goodbye.

     Then I remembered that story he told about the train.  Maybe he was trying then to break through, to tell us about that life he had, the one in the photo, the one before he became what we all needed him to be.  Back when he was the Morty of his own adventure.

     It was a Hanukkah dinner I think but I cannot say for sure.  Those family dinners tend to merge in my mind into one big gabfeast, the table crowded with dishes, the food pouring in from the kitchen in waves, the jokey chatter, and Uncle George behaving himself at least for the time being.

     Afterwards, we were sitting in the living room, waiting for the table to be cleared and then filled with dessert and coffee.  Someone said something about the army and that triggered Morty.  He turned to my aunt Ethel as if to ask permission and she said, with some resignation, “Go ahead, tell them about the train thing.”

     What train thing?

     “It was 1940,” he said.  “I know because it was my 20^th birthday and the last thing I wanted to do was get on that train.”

     “He just got his notice,” my aunt Ethel added.

     Morty, a natural chatter who could read an audience like a third-grade teacher, turned to us kids to explain: “My draft notice.  To join the army.  They sent you a letter.”

     “He had three days to pack and report, can you imagine?”

     “I went down to Grand Central Station with my friend Oscar,” Morty went on.

     “I remember Oscar,” my aunt Betty said popping out of the kitchen.  “He was a good-looking guy.”

     “Let him tell the story,” my uncle Sam said.

     “We were taking the train down to Georgia,” Morty continued.  He had a soft voice but he used it; we had to shut up to hear him.  “That’s where the boot camp was.”

     “A boot camp?” my cousin asked.

     “It’s where they train you for the army,” he said.  “It was in Georgia, a two day train ride.  Very boring.  But then this amazing thing happened on the way.”

      “Amazing?” Ethel said.  “Unbelievable is what it was.”

      So?  Tell it already!  What happened?

      “You never heard this?” Ethel asked my mom, who was placing a cake like a spare tire on the table.  “I told you this.  It’s unbelievable.”

     “Told, didn’t tell.  Who cares?  I never heard it,” Uncle Sam said.

     “I told you,” my aunt insisted.

     “She probably told everyone,” Morty said quietly.  “I mean…it is pretty amazing.”

     “Unbelievable,” my aunt insisted.

     “Are you going to tell us what happened or not?” my other cousin asked, eyeing the cookie tray like a sugar spy.

     “We were on the train,” Morty said.  “A whole bunch of us.  I’d never been outside of New York.  No one had.  City kids.  We were sitting there watching the countryside go by…”

     “Okay!” my mother said, charging into the room.  “Who wants coffee and who want tea?”

     A census was taken, numbers calculated, negotiations made, a final analysis.  A brief argument about decaf.  Soda for the kids?  Yes, but which kind?  The moon rose and fell. Galaxies collapsed.

      “Are you going to finish this story?” my cousin finally asked.

      “Finish already,” Ethel said.  “You’re not going to believe what happened to him.”

      “Where was I?” Morty said.

     On the train to Georgia!

     “That’s right.  Well, there we were on the way to boot camp and suddenly the train stops.  Right in the middle of nowhere.”

     “Middle of where?”

     Nowhere!

     “I mean we had no idea where we were.  Then the conductor comes along and…”

     “Okay everybody,” my aunt Betty said triumphantly, “time for dessert!”

     The kids made a beeline; the adults a more orderly scramble.  In an instant we were back at the table crowded with dishes again, the food pouring in from the kitchen in waves, the jokey chatter all over again, and Uncle George starting to lose it and putting the napkin on his head. 

     Pass this, pass that.  Anyone want milk?  Is there Sweet ‘N Low?  George, stop with the antics already, and we were back into the whole family dinner combustion with barely a flicker that anything had gone before.

     Including the train, of course.  We never got back to that.  And so if Morty had a life, or even one single adventure, before the family, it never lasted through that dinner.  Or probably any other.

     What happened on that train.

     I see now that I neglected to put a question mark – the signature punctuation of life – in the title of this tale. 

     I guess I should add it here?