Moor or Less: Count on it — I have a one-track mind

I drew a few curious looks as I sat on the hood of my car in the Kroc Center’s parking lot and watched a westbound 111-car freight train pass by.

Understandable. It was cold, it was windy and I had just a sweatshirt and Cubs hat on for warmth. But I couldn’t help myself.

I count cars.

 I’ve had this habit since I was a young kid in Galesburg, Illinois — a  rail transportation hub with seven major railways passing through it.

Yeah, I was loco for locomotives..

My mom says I first learned my numbers beyond 20 by counting our the various cars on freight trains. Call it math on the move.

… nineteen (box car) … twenty (flat car) … twenty-one (gondola) …” I would call out from the backseat of our car as we waIted for a train to pass.

This is the only caboose that Bill sees these days.

We lived two blocks away from several tracks and I could hear the train whistles as I laid in bed at night. It was a comforting sound. It still is.

The normal count these days is usually between 80 and 140 cars. But when I was a kid, I watched a couple of trains go by that had almost 200 cars. Did you know a train with that many cars would be about two and a half miles long?

I tried to get my kids interested in counting train cars, but to no avail. So I learned to count in silence. My wife knows what I am doing. As we sit there at a crossing with only my lips moving, she will suddenly say, “How many?”

“… forty-four (tank car) … forty-five (tank car) … forty-six (hopper),” I answer.

Actually, I almost gave it up when the cabooses started disappearing in the 1980s. I loved those red “little houses on rails” that let you know your counting was coming to an end. They didn’t need them anymore, the railroads said. Smaller crews, more automation, better safety procedures made them obsolete.

OK, OK, I get it. But even now when I see a train without a caboose, it’s like a lion without a tail, a home run without the trot, a story without an ending.

But I continue. While everyone else sits there at a crossing, impatiently tapping their steering wheels, I lose all track of time, stay on track and have a one-track mind (all puns intended) as the cars — and numbers in my head — rumble by. And if the freight train is particularly slow, I will even toss out a few verses of “Long Train Runnin’” by The Doobie Brothers.

Well, the Illinois Central

And the Southern Central Freight

Got to keep on pushin’, mama

You know they’re runnin’ late

I try not to count when I’m driving down the road, especially if the train is going the other direction. But when I was a kid, I bet I could beat anyone at tallying up the cars while my Dad drove. Sometimes he would go a little faster just to try to throw me off.

 I sounded like an auctioneer: “… seventy-nineeightyeighty-one…” (coalcarhopperboxcar)

About the only time I don’t like seeing a train is when I’m trying to order at the McDonald’s drive-thru on Lincoln Way near Ironwood and the click-clack of 100-plus cars is only about 30 yards way. (“No I didn’t order two apple pies, just one.”)

Everybody seems happy that a rail strike was recently avoided. Especially President Biden. I am, too — partly because I can keep on counting, even if I don’t get to yell at the finish like I used to.

“one hundred thirteen (gondola) … one hundred fourteen (flat car) …  one hundred fifteen (coal car) …

“… and one hundred sixteen CABOOSE!. The END!”