No Stone Left Unturned

Friday, November 12, 2004, 8:15am

In Switzerland I could set my watch by the comings and goings of the trains. By the usual comings of goings of the MBTA I could perhaps set a moldering sundial. Nevertheless the train is running on-schedule again this morning – two days in a row.

According to my habits the south side of this car grants views most often seen only in the afternoon. With a reawakened interest in geography I particularly notice a separately named body of water – Fiske Pond – south of Lake Cochituate no more than 30 yards shoreline to shoreline with a set of large culverts beneath the rails making a direct connection. This is just like several other lobes of the larger sausage-linked lake and more than a map would be needed to unravel the mystery of a separate name.

Beyond the lake and attached pond trees pass until I am aware of Natick Station – recognized from a 100-foot-long mural covering a singular wall joined from a series of two-story office buildings. Station platform pillars stand close by dividing the mural unnaturally, and only after some study am I able to reconstruct the whole image in my mind. It is a pictorial history of Natick, including some of the original inhabitants who until the King Phillips War maintained a village alongside the banks of the Charles River. Baseballs were once sewn at the old Spaulding Factory, and apparently the arrival of the trains was the same sort of major event in Natick’s history as it was for every other town along the brand new Worcester Line. Those are my passing interpretations. Much more must lay in the passing details.

Back to the future, I seem to have the last three-seater of this car to myself. Soon a boarding passenger at Wellesley Square slides briefly into position on the aisle end until he sees something more to his liking elsewhere and slides out of sight.

Further inbound, by comparison to other stations Wellesley Farms Station feels carved out of the wilderness rather than planted a mere 12 miles from the heart of Boston. A minute later images of a golf course fairway drift into my view broken by the dark blur of passing tree trunks. If there are golfers out for one last round of the year I can’t see any of them.

I remember once writing how nothing ever seems to change on these commutes day after day, but it occurs to me how everything is always changing and change fails to happen only because I fail to notice it.

Norm is joking with one of the Framingham commuting conductors about Frank who ran out of tickets this morning. That must be a big faue puax among conductors – like a baseball player forgetting to bring a bat to the batters box. The train ticket practically defines the conductor’s job – selling tickets, collecting tickets, punching tickets, and most of all keeping a shirt pocket full of blank tickets.

Norm waves off the notion of snow today – that is the prediction for parts west of the city this afternoon. “Nah, won’t happen. They’re just playing with our minds.” And from what I know about the wisdom of Norm there might be more than a little bit of truth to his whimsy.

Two months ago I was alarmed by a carriage with dead air conditioning and today it might snow!

~ by kenramsley on November 12, 2009.

Posted in Journal One
Tags: faue puax, Fiske Pond, King Phillips War, Paying attention, Spaulding