For many people, the COVID19 pandemic brought travel to a screeching halt. Given the death tolls, the strain on medical professionals, the dismantling of whole economies, and the racial and gender disparities of coverage and testing, the inability to travel hardly merits any attention, let alone a blog post, but this is a travel blog, so I will comment on the absence of travel over the past year.
In particular, the absence of train travel, which is my preferred mode of getting around — not just from point a to point z, but all points instead. With the money I was not spending on hotels and transportation, I indulged in some retail therapy and acquired accessories, train cars, and track, so I could *PRETEND* I was traveling. I realize how precious this sounds, but indulge me for a minute. Or, perhaps for a few minutes, since we have not emerged from the Pandemic and the travel restrictions governments have sagely decreed.
This post, titled Palimpsest, represents the culmination of over a month in planning, configuring, and acquisition of parts that will allow me to recreate one of my favorite novels with a train, buildings, various structures with lights and sound, and a bit of atmosphere.
Ray Bradbury published Something Wicked this Way Comes in 1962, following an unsuccessful effort to find funding for a screen treatment he’d written for his buddy Gene Kelly. Eventually Disney would fund a version in 1983 with the magnificent Jonathan Pryce as the sinister Mr. Dark and Jason Robards as Will’s father the janitor at the library. Something Wicked… examines the rather precipitous wear and tear on the soul that fear, desire, and spectacle can wield on children entering their adolescence. I have recreated their town Green Town (said to be a generic stand-in for Bradbury’s hometown of Waukeegan). In Green town, the viewer will see Will and Jim’s houses next to each other; the city library where Will’s world-weary father works as a janitor; a police station where Jim and Will spend time after getting framed for robbery by a malignant visitor; and a train depot. Oh, and also a haunted house.
When best friends Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway hear a train pulling into town at 3 in the morning on October 24th — a time when no carnivals usually come to town, they race to the fairgrounds outside town and poke around places they don’t belong, like the carousel Mr Cooger operates. Before the week is out, Jim and Will learn the true cost of getting what you wish, and Will’s father Charles rediscovers laughter and the power of living through joy. It *SOUNDS* cheesy, but the genius of Bradbury’s novel is the oppressive atmosphere he loads every scene — to the point a reader wants to recite passages out loud to dispel the chill the prose soaks into one’s bones. Most importantly, though, the two boys learn what it means to grow too old too fast, and how to learn not to wish too fervently for every heart’s desire.
One of the most effective devices the novel uses to grant wishes, take souls,and increase the atmosphere of horror, Mr. Cooger’s carousel can age or take away the years, depending on the direction it spins. I found this particularly useful because the calliope — much like an accordion or drums — can impart joy or fear, depending on how it’s played. Backwards (a trick I haven’t engineered with my carousel’s electronics), it sounds even more sinister and evil, which plays into Mr. Bradbury’s atmospherics perfectly.
It won’t surprise the reader to learn that I took extensive video footage of this operation, but I had no idea until I began to upload it that WordPress would charge abhorrent fees to view them footage. Instead, I uploaded the video footage to my cloud storage and here are some links:
Green Town after dark, complete with haunted house: https://files.mycloud.com/home.php?brand=webfiles&seuuid=a2adcc008d7ab4afa8214281f1991c2b&name=greentown_night
The carnival train pulling into town: https://files.mycloud.com/home.php?brand=webfiles&seuuid=c0944eda7973164d7cd1c69c63778281&name=mrdark_train_3am
The carnival at night, when Jim and Will explore: https://files.mycloud.com/home.php?brand=webfiles&seuuid=72b05f72bad83a4dbb9379e30a21d67c&name=mrdark_carnival_night
Mr. Cooger’s carousel,moving in the correct direction, right before Mr. Cooger catches Jim and Will: https://files.mycloud.com/home.php?brand=webfiles&seuuid=db30cf993fc31f19b50d55b29a2f7726&name=coogers_carousel
Downstream on the Clyde 