Childhood Memories

Childhood Memories - Thanksgiving

When I was a child Thanksgiving marked the start of the Christmas Season. There was a big parade in downtown Pottsville in the morning. The city turned on the lights that decorated the pole of every street light and were draped across the streets. Thanksgiving dinner was always crowded with aunts, uncles and cousins. We had it at my maternal grandmother’s house. In the evening we would go to my paternal grandparents’ place where there was a lot more to eat. The long wait for Christmas had begun.

Childhood Memories – Christmas

Decorations, other than the tree, went up on Christmas Eve. That went up the last weekend before Christmas. Of course, we had the obligatory trainset running around the tree. We went to bed but had trouble sleeping. Finally, morning came. We opened our gifts and then went to church. Mass on Christmas Day always seemed special. From there we went to my paternal grandparents’ for Christmas Dinner. This was actually my grandmother’s second big culinary exercise in about 12 hours. There was the Christmas Eve Dinner of the Seven Fishes and we only got to that when we were older. It began late in the evening, about 2200 hours, I think and it was 0100 before we got home and to bed. By contrast Christmas Dinner was relatively simple but there was enough food for an army, all of it made by my grandmother and her daughters.

Following Diner we went around the neighborhood visiting relatives and neighbors. Everyone had a train of some sort around their tree and we had to see all of them and watch them run. It was great fun. Decorating with lights around windows and doorways was very popular. Walking through a doorway trimmed in colored lights was like walking through an entrance to a magic land. There was a tree, trains and snacks of all types. We and our cousins played with the toys received from “Santa” while the adults talked about, what I have no idea. Everyone was playing Christmas music of some sort and you heard Gene Autry sing “Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer about 30,000 times between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.

The Twelve Days of Christmas that started on Christmas Eve ended with Epiphany and we took down the decorations and packed them away until next Christmas. For a few lucky ones, the trainset stayed up a bit longer or, if we were really lucky it got moved to a place in the attic or
basement.

Christmas is not like that now. The only reason the season does not begin right after Labor Day is that Halloween generates a lot of retail sales (the most of any other holiday than Christmas). Instead of focusing on family, friends and church, we now are bombarded with ads and commercials urging us to spend, spend, spend. We are made to feel that unless we spend a lot on money on someone we do not love them. It is too bad because we seem to have lost the entire “Reason for the Season.”

It is disappointing to see people taking down their decorations the day after Christmas because “Christmas is over until next year.” It is only just getting started but they do not realize that. They are missing the best time of the year when there is a break in everyday life for most of us and we can get together with our friends and families to enjoy being with those we love and cherish. Too bad people do not realize this as they are missing something very special.

Oh, The Weather Outside...

I thought that as long as I am on here I would put up something more about the weather here in Lancaster County. On the day of my post of 26 October it snowed. Some places received almost a foot of snow and others, like here at the office, might have had three inches. It has been a very long time since we had a measurable snow in October. To make this even more unusual, by Sunday it was all gone except for where it was piled up by snowplows. As I write this it is 65 degrees outside and it is the Monday after Thanksgiving! If nothing else the weather is keeping things interesting.

A Big Step Forward, I hope

Every member of TCA can have free admission to The National Toy Train Museum, and is entitled to some research time in The Toy Train Reference Library. Yet, most members have no idea just what is there. For some members, distance is the problem. We are trying to change that.

After several years of planning and months of work by staff and volunteers alike, we have something that I think can be appreciated by members and nonmembers no matter where they live. Click on http://www.nttmuseum.org/exhibits/layouts/standard/index.htm and you will be able to see some of the rare or historic buildings on the Standard Gauge Layout. With the click of a mouse you can also get an engineer’s view of one of the loops on the layout.

Something like this is not the work of one person. It truly was a team effort. As a result we have many people to thank because without their hard work it would never have been done at all. In no particular order they are, Administrative Assistant Melody Rogers and the Education and Museum Committee for identifying the buildings, getting them ready to photograph and providing the preliminary track plan drawing, Librarian Jan Athey and the Library & Historical Committee for providing the caption information for the building photos, Publications Editor Tim Stier for creating the track plan in a format ready for the website, Donna Wilcox for the great building photos, Mark Meyers at SR Film Productions for the trip around the layout, and Jim Alexander at JimQuest Communications, our webmaster, for putting the entire project together and getting it up on line.

All of us here hope that this is the first of many efforts to bring The National Toy Train Museum to a wider audience.

Here Comes Winter

We are now a bit more than a month into fall here in Lancaster County. The leaves are changing color about one week later than usual. This could be because of all the rain we have had since August. A lackluster tourist trade in September, buoyed only by the Thomas the Tank Engine Event at the Strasburg Rail Road has carried over into October. Short days will become even shorter when we revert back to Standard time.

Despite the lack of visitors some activities continue unabated. Farm work is intense this time of year. There is harvesting to be done and fields need to be readied for next spring. Whether Amish or English (to the Amish, anyone who is not Amish is English no matter where you are from or how you look), farmers have their work cut out for them as all this needs to finish before the first snowfall. There is the $64,000.00 question. When will we see out first snow? If it were left to me it would be never.

Like almost everyone else, I enjoyed snow when I was much younger. During my first twelve years of school every snowstorm held the potential of a day, or more off from school. While in college it became a reason for long romantic walks with a coed on campus. Once I got into the trucking business full time all that changed.
Equipment gets stuck and accidents occur at a distressing rate. People seem to disappear. At one place I worked we actually had more people marked off then we had available to work. All because of that slippery white stuff. I told my friends on Facebook that snow is really God’s punishment for the sins of Adam and Eve. Like sin, it looks beautiful but it is very bad for you.

The location of the National Headquarters is a unique place to be in the winter. Once the surrounding fields are harvested there is nothing to block the wind so it becomes quite intense. Add snow to that, especially the powdery stuff, and the drifting makes this area almost impassable. Because of the “lay of the land” across Paradise Lane, our driveway is often drifted shut, with some drifts reaching five or more feet in height.

I have seen drifts at least that high and thirty feet into the parking lot the surface is bare. Our plowing contractor does a great job keeping the driveway and parking lot open so we can work. So here we are getting ready for another winter in Lancaster County.

On Track With TCA

In my previous post I talked about how I think we should see bigger numbers of visitors at the National Toy Train Museum Facebook page and Twitter Account. With our many members who have Internet access, the number of LIKEs on Facebook and FOLLOWERs on Twitter are disappointing.

An Internet area that is proving popular with members, however, is On Track With TCA, an electronic newsletter sent via E-mail. Sometimes called an E-blast, as it goes to a large number of people, this E-publication has about 13,000 recipients and that number is growing. We are finding this to be an excellent way to communicate with a large part of the membership in a timely fashion.

This is definitely a "work in progress" as we try to include several short items of interest to TCA members. We are seeing a positive response to this as Items offered for sale always spike after On Track is sent out. Another indication of how popular this has become is the large number of people who tell me that they enjoy getting it.

At some point, we would like to publish this on a regular basis. Stay tuned for that and some other interesting things on the Internet.

Where Are You?

Back in April I talked about how your National Toy Train Museum can now be found on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NationalToyTrainMuseum) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/toytrainmuseum).

Our Association seems to suffer from an extreme lack of curiosity as you have not responded very well. The Museum has gotten a LIKE from 463 people (about 90% of them NOT TCA members) and Twitter has garnered 160 FOLLOWERS. Again most of them NOT TCA members.

As we currently have about 29,500 members I am thinking that we should be seeing much higher numbers of members hitting the LIKE button on Facebook. As recently as one year ago, the fastest growing demographic on Facebook was people age 50 and up. Mature adults are discovering that Facebook is an excellent way to keep up with far-flung children and grandchildren. TCA members definitely fall into that category.

Twitter is a different story and I can easily understand the lower numbers there. Twitter users are considerably younger than the average of TCA member. You will find most individuals on Twitter are in their teens and twenties along with many celebrities of various types (it seems some of them have a "Tweeter" as part of their entourage). Businesses and cultural institutions also use Twitter and we are a part of that group.

I would urge you to take a peek at one of these in the near future.

IMPORTANT - TCA VISA Card

The economic downturn has affected everyone in some way. TCA is no exception. One of those ways is the TCA VISA Card. The card issuer, Bank of America, has reviewed all of their affinity card programs. Based upon the results of that review, TCA no longer meets their renewal criteria.

Please note the following:
· This program will end on 31 January 2012
· No new applications will be accepted as of now
· Current cardholders will receive notification of the ending of the program in their next few statements.
· Their cards will be replaced by Bank of America with generic Bank of America cards, if those cardholders wish to continue to use a Bank of America card.
· Current cardholders may terminate their accounts if they wish but need to be familiar with the method of doing so.

This is not good news for TCA. Over the years, despite some member opposition, this program has produced a significant amount of revenue that helped to forestall dues increases and subsidize membership benefits.

As is the case with every other business and organization in this country, we will need to examine what we do and how we do it.