My son George spends almost every Saturday with his grandfather, who he has affectionately called Poppop since the day he started talking.
Both of my grandfathers were in heaven by the time I was five. I never had the luxury of a grandfather’s wisdom.
PopPop is my father-in law… though I don’t know how that works after a divorce. I guess it depends on the family or the circumstances. In our case it is the circumstances.
PopPop has had a love for trains since he was a little boy growing up on the Southside of Chicago. He loved taking pictures of the old steam locomotives cutting through his neighborhood. PopPop has a vast knowledge of railroads and that broke the ice for me when I started dating his daughter. My father was a career railroader, so I had a good background with trains.
PopPop has a beautiful model train collection in his basement. A whole section filled with shelves holding O-gage locomotives and railroad equipment. He still has his original transformer and steam locomotive from his childhood and many more he has bought through the years.
Mr. Bergmann, PopPop was always a stickler when it came to operating his train board. He was the only person who could run a locomotive on his train table.
For years there was a light on his table that didn’t work. He could not figure out if it was a bulb or a wire. He even had an electrician take a look at the vast number of wires crisscrossing under the layout.
When George was about four, he was crawling under Mr. Bergmann’s choo choo trains. This was about the time we realized there was something special about our firstborn child. Georgie got under the spot with the faulty wire and jiggled this, finagled that and suddenly PopPop screamed out,
“George! George what did you do?”
I was upstairs and thought the worst had just happened. I ran downstairs and PopPop and George both had huge smiles on their faces.
“George fixed the light that hasn’t worked for years! He was under the table, I was running the ‘City of New Orleans’ and VOILA….The light came on!”
From that point on PopPop let George run his trains. PopPop would remove and replace any steam locomotive George wanted to run. A four-year-old grandson had the privilege to operate The Bergmann Railroad. George is the only family member that was ever given permission to run the trains.
From that day George and PopPop have been thick as thieves. PopPop has the gift of understanding how George is wired and he handles it well. That is why they get together almost every Saturday for several hours.
Every weekend PopPop has their schedule planned. Mr. Bergmann is also a stickler for planning things out and holding firm to the itinerary.
This weekend George called his grandfather on Friday afternoon and told him the plan has changed. I was sure this was going to make a couple of planets collide, but it didn’t.
PopPop not only trusts George with his train board, but he listened to George’s new plan and approved of it.
George told Pop to get on the 10am Metra in Hinsdale. George would get on ten minutes later when it arrived in Riverside. They would get into the city and walk over to the elevated tracks that form the Loop.
The CTA was running two vintage cars made in 1923 to celebrate 100 years. Both PopPop and George were excited.
They spent an hour riding around the Loop repeatedly in the vintage 4000-series railcars. Then they met JoJo, George’s grandmother, for lunch at their favorite restaurant, Bruna’s. George planned out the whole day and created a fond memory for years to come.
These Saturdays together are piling up. Just like the Saturdays I once had with my father. The sad day will come when Pop takes the choo choo to heaven, leaving a vast collection of fond memories for Georgie. A gift that will never be taken away from my son.
I laid in bed last night thinking about PopPop and MY relationship with him. It has become close again in the last year or so. I realized that Mr. Bergmann will always be my father-in-law. Maybe the reason I met his daughter was to give him a train conductor grandson?
Life has a funny way of working out, but at some point, it always works out. You just got to let it come at its own accord.
How ironic is it that today is National Father-in-Law Day? Like I said, funny how things work out.
It is Sunday Funday and for me it started at 1:54 this morning. I was able to catch the tail end of the moon before it settled into the horizon. Remember the August Full moon is Tuesday. August has two full moons this year and both of them are super moons.
This week is the Sturgeon Moon and at the end of the month it will be a blue moon. The term used for a second full moon in the same month.
Let’s end July with happiness and good health! August brings the sixth-year anniversary of the Chalkboard experience. It sure has been a therapeutic journey that has kept me grounded and inspired every single day.
Until tomorrow Chalkheads!
