Cherish Your Happy Moments

 

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It’s good to keep our happy moments close to us. They help to see us through moments that are not so happy: the stressful moments, the sad moments, the confusing moments. Here are some of my happy moments:

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To celebrate our wedding anniversary, one year, my husband and I took a flight on a C-47 Skytrain, the Commemorative Air Force's That's All, Brother. As you may know, the C-47 is the military version of the DC-3. Donald Douglas' brainchild went far to move aviation from the wood frame-and-canvass era and into the honeycomb-monocoque construction that aircraft still use today. The two piston-driven Pratt & Whitney R-1830 engines have their own distinctive sound, while the broad wings provide lift that gives one a sense of security even in turbulence. On the day in question, That's All, Brother was on its way to England, where it flew with 36 other C-47s for the 75th Anniversary of the D-Day Invasion of Normandy. From there, it would go on to participate in a re-enactment of the Berlin Airlift before winging her way home to Texas.

One sunny, autumn day, my husband and I had just finished having lunch at a Mexican restaurant when Amtrak’s City of New Orleans came through. I stood on the sidewalk in front of our car and waved to the engineer, who waved very broadly back at me and gave a friendly toot of the train’s horn. He’ll never know how happy he made me.

A few years ago, an online friend in New York posted one of his photographs on his Facebook page. It gave me an idea for a story, so I wrote a short-short (3 pages) and sent it to him. He liked it and sent me another photograph, so I wrote a short-short (5 pages) about it and sent it to him. I wasn't happy with my second story, then, but now, I find that it really speaks to me. So do the memories of having shared that day online with my New York friend.

 

On a Saturday afternoon, some twenty years ago, I was working in my home office when I heard the sound of the piston-driven engines of a Douglas DC-3 flying overhead. I declared to my husband that there was a DC-3 in the area. He wasn’t so sure, but we drove to the airport. Sure enough, we found a DC-3 in World War II C-47 livery on the tarmac. The pilot allowed us to climb aboard to tour the old war bird. 

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When I worked for Air Force Publications, I was honored by my colleagues. They knew I like chocolate and celebrated my birthday with an ooey-gooey chocolate cake from the Watergate Bakery. They knew I took lots of Vitamin C and gave me an orange as large as a grapefruit. They knew I was researching a book on the C-141 StarLifter and gave me books and posters that they had published. They took me to lunch at the Officers Club. Sgt. Dave, our computer guru, remembered the problems we'd had with computer bugs by giving me a cartoon that showed a group of bugs gathered around a computer monitor while one pointed and exclaimed, "There! That's the man who has been causing all our problems!" Bless my Air Force colleagues, one and all.

More than thirty years ago, a year before we moved there, I was in Washington, visiting my cousin. She had to work, so I caught the Metro to Bethesda, had lunch at O’Donnell’s (which shared the name of a family in my writing), then took a bus across the East-West Highway, through Silver Spring, and on to the end of the line in the College Park / Greenbelt area. I was the only passenger remaining on the bus, and the driver asked where I was trying to go. I told him I wasn’t going anywhere, in particular, but I had seen the downtown sights. Now, I wanted to see how the real people lived. He was so impressed that he paid for my return ride to Silver Spring. Bless his heart.

 

When taking Amtrak’s Cardinal home from that Washington trip, the conductor joined me at my table in the café car. He asked me whether it was my first train trip (No, I used to ride Illinois Central’s City of New Orleans to visit my grandparents). He asked what kind of locomotive that train used. I said I didn’t know, but with its down-sloped windshield and orange-and-brown colors, it looked like a sad-eyed Basset Hound. He taught me about that locomotive, an Electro-Motive Division E-8. He went on to tell me about the predecessor of the train on which we were riding. It seems the Cardinal began life as the Chesapeake & Ohio’s George Washington – and Mr. Conductor served on that train, too! Bless his heart for opening the door to my learning about trains. I love them to this day, all thanks to him.

 

For a year, I corresponded with an Englishman, who was well versed in an area I was researching for my writing. He taught me so many things about England, things that we tend not to hear about on this side of the pond unless we happen to be researching those specific things. He described the labor strikes of the early 1970s by writing that the train drivers struck “for the lack of a chocolate bar and a hat that fits.” He described the complexities of the Oxbridge universities by writing, “the courts of the Hapsburgs seem free and easy by comparison.” Interesting that I still remember those two phrases nearly 40 years after our correspondence. Being a rail fan, he taught me about railway hotels. I’d never heard of them before, yet some years later, as I read about Fred Harvey and the Harvey Houses along the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe line (now, Amtrak’s Southwest Chief), I learned that we had railway hotels here, too! Of course, Mr. Harvey did hail from England, which just might have inspired him.

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What are some of your happy moments? Write them down and keep them close for when you need a pick-me-up.

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