I had a hot date last Tuesday. Granddaughter Kimberly proposed to her mother that they invite me to lunch. That’s an offer a fellow can’t refuse.
We offered Kim her choice of restaurants. She named one her mom and I weren’t too excited about. “How about trying out the restaurant that has just re-opened in the old train station?” we asked her. Her eyes danced as she accepted our suggestion.
In front of the historic Santa Fe depot, we passed by the grand old steam locomotive that graces the grounds. “That’s an old train,” Kim yelped when she spotted it. Emphasis on the “old.”
“It sure is,” I agreed with her. “That’s the kind of train they had when Papa was a boy.” She nodded.
Inside the depot/restaurant as we waited for our food, we sat right next to huge windows that look out on the maze of tracks in the switching yard. A few tank cars sat idle on a siding on the far side, but to 4-year-old Kim’s obvious disappointment, no moving trains were in sight.
“This is where people used to come to catch a train,” I explained to Kim, trying to interest her in something besides the silent tracks. “People came here and bought tickets so they could ride on the trains to places far away.”
“Like we go now to the airport to catch a plane to Dallas,” Kim’s mom chimed in. “We call the airport a terminal. This building was called a depot.” Kim tried out this unfamiliar word.
“Today people in Amarillo can’t ride on a train,” I continued my grandfatherly lesson in ancient lore. “Years ago trains used to come and go from right here taking people all over the country, but passenger trains don’t come here anymore.”
“Yeah,” Kim agreed with the solemnity of a judge, “just like all the dinosaurs died.”
Her mother and I almost lost it. Enjoying the innocent dig, Paula asked me under her breath, “I wonder how old she thinks you are?”
Time is so relative. To God a thousand years seems as brief as a day. To a child waiting for Santa Claus, a day seems like a thousand years.
So Moses taught us to pray, “Teach us to number our days, that we may use them wisely.”