Grandpa's Railroad in the Basement

Every Christmas when I was a kid, my grandfather opened the door to his basement, flipped a switch and the whole room came alive. He had built a model railroad that filled the entire space: mountains made of plaster, a tiny town with a church and a gas station, a lake made of glass and three trains that ran on separate tracks.

Now he's eighty-eight, and he asked me to help him run it again. It hadn't been turned on in five years. We spent two weeks cleaning tracks, replacing bulbs and untangling wires older than my father.

On Christmas Eve, we invited the whole family down. Grandpa flipped the switch. The streetlights in the tiny town lit up. The church bell chimed. The freight train chugged out of a tunnel, blowing a little whistle.

My four-year-old nephew pressed his face against the edge of the table and didn't move for an hour. Grandpa sat beside him in a folding chair, the controller in his lap, explaining every car. "That one carries coal," he said. "That one carries the mail. And that one," he pointed to the caboose, "carries the best part, which is the end."