Nat’l. Trivia Day today, so you know we’re on top of that, for sure. And the Question for the Day is: What took place on this date 35 years ago in Chase, Md.? If you’ve been with us for any amount of time over the last 10 yrs., you know!
Yes. That’s correct. The fatal Amtrak-Conrail collision, killer of 16, injurer of 164. Thirty-five years ago already. Where does that time go? We still don’t know the answer to that question after lo these three-and-a-half decades.
Been looking at the stranded motorists along I-95 today, Jan. 4, 2022, in Northern Va., and it has to be awful. It was a similarly cold day on Jan. 4, 1987, snow on the ground, triaged there in Chase, in the backyards of houses along the tracks there. No cellphones or devices back then, so the people had to wait to call over to their loved ones, and their loved ones had to wait. Came out of there with a knock on the right side of the forehead, a big gash down the right shinbone. Eyeglasses gone, one shoe and one sock gone, book gone, overnight bag gone, though those would be retrieved and returned a couple of days later.
Kind people along the tracks. We interrupted their first post-holiday Sunday, yet their were nice enough to try to comfort us. Coffee was offered, but we weren’t drinking coffee back then. That cold and confusing afternoon, we needed something stiffer. We wanted to be sure we could still feel something burn down the insides.
Before that, on impact, it all went dark, and there was spinning, and there was waiting. Later, seven years after the train spinning, when the great Northridge earthquake of 1994 hit the Valley, there was the same kind of waiting, wondering what might happen next. You just held on. For the earthquake, it was hanging onto the bed and seeing if the ocean would crash through the window, perhaps the ceiling crashing down. For the train wreck, it was half-expecting some giant piece of steel or metal, probably sharp, carving into the skull.
But neither of those things took place, and here we are today. Sometimes life happens to you, and then life stops happening; but life is still happening here in 2022, 35 yrs. after 1987. Loved ones have gotten sick, died, moved on, been mourned; others have come on the scene and taken their place, new wonder and joy unfolding with each tick of the clock.
And you never know. If you told us on that fateful first Sunday afternoon of 1987 that over time we’d become La-La Land lovers living at the tippy-top of famous Nichols Canyon and be fit and athletic and under 140 lbs. and be a step-grandfather (twice over!), we would have told you to get a refund for your dusty crystal ball! So, of course, you never know. Time has other ideas. Life will set the proper course for yourself.
Life has happened to us, no doubt, more than we have taken life by the horns and wrested it into our best imagining of what we might have thought was best. In this way, we’ve been much more Billy Pilgrim than John Galt or Howard Roark. But that’s OK, because it’s real, and it keeps us from trying to get giant-sized. Surely we can grow into right-sizedness, but that seems to be better than overcoming the illusion of a unmanageable giant-sizedness.
So it still goes!
WMF Report / Track-Trend Notes for Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2022 — @HollywoodPenn 6f, @turf_paradise 6 1/2f are your top frontrunning trips for the rest of your afternoon & evening.
— Cynthia Publishing Company (AIO V6 / BestLine) (@cpcbestline) January 4, 2022
Some contentious races yesterday, but we couldn’t get hold of them. The sixth and eighth at Sunland (!), plus the fifth at Turf Paradise, appear as today’s Thoroughbred tossups. Stay on track. The tracks always stay with us.
