Charley the Choo Choo

Charley was a big, red choo choo.
Everyday he’d go from Hiville to Loville
and then back again.
Charley would take grains and cereals from Hiville,
and he’d get all sorts of good things to eat from Loville.
Charley was so busy going to and from Hiville and Loville
that he never even slowed down at all the little towns he passed through,
or even tooted twice to all the little girls and boys
who would come out and wave every time he passed by.

Charley chugged on, day after day,
and probably would’ve chugged on forever
had it not been for what happened one sunny day
while Charley was at the roundabout in Loville
getting ready to make the trip back to Hiville.
While they were loading Charley with all those wonderful things to eat
a little bird flew down and sat on the wire
that ran right beside the tracks.
And the little bird asked,
“Doesn’t that just bore you to tears?”
And Charley replied, “I don’t understand.”
“I mean,” said the little bird, “you just do the same thing, day in and day out,
going back and forth and back and forth.
You never get to see a distant grove of trees
or find out where the river begins.
You never get to see the sun rise over a far away mountain
or feel a tropical breeze on your face.
You never even get to haul anything different.
That would bore me to insanity.”

And then the little bird flew away before Charley could ask it anything more.
But still, Charley thought about what the little bird had said,
which was something Charley had never thought about before.
And the more he thought, the more he realized
that maybe that little bird was right.
And Charley came to realized just how unhappy he really was.
And he got to thinking that maybe he’d never been happy all along.
So Charley the big red choo choo
made up his mind right then and there
that he was going to see the rest of the world.

The first place Charley went was into the town of Loville.
He went right down the middle of the street
looking into all of the shops and theaters and dance halls,
and at all the strange people who hung out on the street corners
wearing big hats and flashing gold-capped teeth.
But before Charley got very far at all,
a policeman stopped him and said,
“You can’t drive down our streets.
Streets are made for bicycles and cars, not locomotives.
Your sharp steel wheels will leave ruts in our roads
and make it too lumpy for people to drive on.”
So Charley had to leave.

The next place Charley came to was the country,
where he went past a farm.
There he saw horses and cows playing in a field,
and chickens and ducks playing in the barnyard,
and dogs and sheep playing in the meadow.
And Charley wanted to play, too,
only the farmer came out and said,
“You can’t be here.
Farms are made for animals.
Your chugging scares the chicks and ducklings,
and your smoke makes the grass turn brown.”
So Charley had to leave.

The next place Charley went was the forest,
where he saw the deer hiding in the thickets,
and the birds flying through the branches,
and the bears playing in the grassy glades
while honey bees flew busily about
and fish flipped playfully in the little stream that tumbled over the rocks
as it wound its way through the woods.
And Charley thought it would be a wonderful place to stay,
only Charley couldn’t stay there, either,
because a forest ranger came up and said,
“Forests are no place for locomotives.
Your big wheels crush the wild flowers
and your noisy whistle scares the bunnies and woodchucks.”
So Charley had to leave.

In fact, everywhere that Charley went,
whether it was the mountains or the prairie,
the beach or the desert,
it was the same thing --
Charley had to leave.

Finally Charley ended up right where he had begun,
at the roundabout in Loville.
But there he found that they no longer wanted him.
Charley had been replaced by a sleek, new diesel,
which the builder had been careful not to give a personality to,
so that it never got bored.

Since Charley had no place else to go,
he chugged over to the old train yard
where they put all the broken trains,
and there Charley chugged his last chug.

And it was there that the same little bird
came and found the rusted hulk of what had once been Charley.
And since Charley’s old smoke stack was such a perfect place,
she built her nest there.
And that is where she returned year after year to build her nests.
And when she grew old and died,
her children continued to come back and build their nests there, too,
and so did their children after them.
And I suppose they still do.