The wonderful workings of a time machine


Pete suggested we all take a walk to the Eltingville train station.
Since neither one of us could come up with anything better, we
decided to walk. Ten minutes later we arrive at the Optimo shop,
adjacent to the station where we entered. John looks at the cigars,
but buys nothing. Pete looks at the Tiparillo's and buys a pack of
Tijuana Smalls, while I, not wanting to get lost in the shuffle, request
a pack of Muriel. Joe was a cigar chomping Brooklyn native who
always had a cigar in his mouth. No one understood him when he
spoke that unintelligible jargon, but we respected him, nonetheless.

Upon exiting the cigar store, which was partly a convenience store,
I paused under the overhanging sign to light my cigar. After sparking
it five times, my cricket lighter would produce its final flame. So small
was this delicate bead of light, that it almost seemed to be levitating
above the lighter itself! Knowing it was about to disappear, I immediately fanned it by puffing in reverse. We usually puff that way when we use
a match to light a stogie. The flame flares out like a torch!

As we ascended the steps leading up to the Eltingville train station,
I suggested we walk the tracks. Since we were all feeling a bit adventurous, Pete decided it wasn't such a bad idea. As I stood over the yellow line, looking down at the tracks, I felt like a gerbil running the wheel. My heart was speeding and it seemed as though I were running on only one pint of blood. Enervated and weak would be the best way to describe it. Like a bus ready to overheat, I removed my sweatshirt. I then thought about what I had done and removed my T-shirt as well. John simply could not fathom me walking bare chested and began to act very embarrassed and ashamed. He then began walking in the opposite direction before stopping, like a little boy who suddenly realizes he has been following a stranger. Peter who was acting very truculent kept to himself. In a way he was becoming almost territorial and that could prove to be a danger to us all. I gazed
at the metal sign posted to the railing on the station's platform. It read Eltingville and I could not understand why. What did it mean? I know it was foolish to dwell on, but I couldn't help wondering! We then hopped down from the old wooden platform and began our descent into oblivion. I tried to imagine what we must look like to the ghosts and apparitions now watching us from the station as we faded away into the distance.

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There was always something watching someone it appeared,
as if from a ubiquitous window in time, and I found that to be exhilarating! Looking back, my eyes took a second to focus, like a cheap camera that was always on and ready. How wonderful it felt to be in motion. To be moving unrestrained! So free are we now to travel. To go about our way without restrictions! To follow our own instinct and senses without rules and regulations posted everywhere, showing you where you can and cannot go. Telling us what we can and cannot do! With each step I took,
I began to feel like I was walking into a dream, and the further we got,
the more memorable the whole night seemed.

In the distance, I could see the Hawaiian restaurant coming into view.
All the white vinyl letters on the brown metal sign, have curled up around the edges. So intrigued was I by the withering of the years, I found myself entranced in its hypnotic presence. I was completely baffled at how it now looked more Polynesian and more exotic than it ever did before! As we got closer, I realized that these white stick on letters actually had more of
a sharp and pronounced look to them as they got older. Almost like a new form of Asian lettering! It seemed that they were now fully accentuated by the whole aspect of the South Pacific sea, and a foreign culture we've come to adopt and to love.

Below the overpass, calcium carbonate deposits form small, brittle stalactites on its underbelly. Here, water becomes trapped in the pores
of the old concrete, and gradually, it finds its way out the only way it can. In winter, they resemble a glistening waterfall, like that of frozen milk. One that is smooth to the touch as polished glass, while in summer it seems to be caked and crumbling, as if it had already begun its transformation into rock salt.

As we exited the overpass and moved on, I saw an old barbed wire fence to my left. Covered in rust and decaying, it stood there like a monument from another time. Toward the middle, it bowed like a swag valance, for
a tree had grown through it. As that tree continues to grow, it has no other choice than to eat whatever is in its way. One day, I'm sure that part of the fence is going to be either gone or dangling many feet in the air like an old kite string. Further ahead, the superannuated fence just seemed to stop, leaving its bare, rusting threads to dance like fibrils in the wind. Soon, neither us nor they shall remain.

Eventually, we were approaching the Annadale station, where I felt it
grow stronger still. I then noticed a large banner draped across the trestle
that read, "Welcome to Annadale Junction" and I became elated.

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John noticed it too and asked happily, "what's a junction?" I told him that a hundred years ago there was no such thing as a train station. Back then, a train stop was called a junction, and that we may very well be back in time. Of course I was making the whole thing up as I went along! To infuse my ideas into the mind of someone else as an attempt
to get him into them as well.

If you look at the situation the way I was looking at it, you
would have to ask yourself a question. Who in their right mind
would ingest a psychoactive substance, and then go outside
and try to act normal? Isn't that what coffee is for?

John marveled at the thought of it and was filled with glee! It wasn't
long after this that he was overcome by insurmountable little bursts
of adrenaline. The kind we so often felt as children on an excitable day. My mind soon began to prefabricate yarns, and as I walked on, I was not really there but somewhere else. In my head, I imagined we passed through a doorway. A doorway leading back instead of forward. The 1980's had miraculously vanished, and I was now walking down the tracks before my parents were born! It was an incredible feeling. Kind of like being in a dream where you are living somewhere else. You know every room in
that house; till you wake up! I could envision the horse drawn carriages awaiting me on the other side of the tracks, and as the wheels inside my head began to spin faster, my senses were more attuned to creating the next scene. In my mind's eye have I seen, the sun standing still in the midday hour. Women in fancy dress, walking nonchalantly as they gently twirl their parasols behind them are, in fact, sporting their femininity. I hear them whisper very excitedly to one another, while vying through the corner of their eyes for perspective grooms. Never were these damsels at any time grandiloquent in nature, but more so, rather quiet and shy. Euphoria was coursing through my veins like an analgesic, and I was now oblivious to everything, except that of my own macrocosm. Although I knew in my heart it was only a state of mind, my imagination was taking me to new heights. Weird things were beginning to happen in my brain! Everything was anticipating itself and I truly felt that at any given moment, I was
going to make the transition from 1982 to 1882! Such a powerful thought was this, that it overwhelming my senses! While we continued to follow the shimmering rails of lighted steel, we proceeding on down the tracks feeling like the lords of all creation! But this was just not meant to be for up ahead, in the distance, we heard what was ultimately the end of my evening.

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