Two More Stories: Railroad Crossings & Machinery

Railroad Crossings

by Felix Graff

Once there was a railroad crossing. It was so old that the crossing guards never went down, because no one ever cleaned the rust off the gears. And when a train went through, a car was driving and he couldn’t see the lights flashing and he couldn’t hear the bell ringing because he had his music up way too loud and he was looking around out the window and didn’t see any lights flashing. And he went through the crossing and he saw the train so he stepped on his gas pedal super fast—so he just made it across. The train engineer stopped just in time.

Then he went through another crossing. It was so old the lights couldn’t flash, the guard couldn’t go down and the bell couldn’t ring. And there was just an extra crossing guard that never got rust on its gears. It was built so well it never got rust. And those guards went down and it warned the car. And the car stopped in time. And when it was about to almost go through an open bridge, it slammed windshield first into the guard. And do you know what happened? The guard broke down, falling across the street, making tire after tire go flat. And then, finally, when another tire went flat, some workers came, and they picked up the crossing guard and they put it in the dump because it was just like so old. And then they put another crossing guard in, and that one, the same thing happened with that very car again! So they had to fix it. And then it never happened—almost never—only it happened one time, again, with another car. Actually, it was a bulldozer that crashed. And guess what? Its bucket that pushed things broke off. And it bounced over the fence and it fell into the water and sank. And it never got a new bucket again, so it had to stay in the scrap yard.

Machinery

Once there was a garage door machine and it was old so whenever it opened it only went four inches up, and the opening place was sixteen feet up. Then the car could never get into the garage because the door kept going lower and lower and soon it got so low it touched the ground. The garage door on every wheel was an eyeball. Then there was a wheel and it didn’t have an eyeball because all the eyeballs were black. But the other garage door never stopped working so he backed up into the street and used that garage door. The garage door was 9 years old.

Felix Graff, Author

This week, Felix started dictating stories to us. Here's the first one.

Moving Stones
by Felix Graff

There was a moving stone and the castle. And when a little boy came into the castle, the moving stone moved and hit him on the head with a hammer, because he was a bad boy. That moving stone was 1,000 feet high. Then, next to it, stood a stone that was 9,000 feet high. And then the castle fell down. The stones, they knew somebody was saying a bad word, so they rolled out of that bad mess and they caught that bad guy. He was talking to the stones like mean. The stones move because they want to scare people when they say bad words. And the stones, they sometimes move to say “hi.” When they got that little boy, they rolled out of the castle mess. And then another bad guy came into the castle and wanted to shoot the good stones. He didn’t want to shoot the bad stones because they would kill him with the hammer. And they also had axes. The good stones and the bad stones had compactors inside them. Suddenly, a mechanical claw reached out of the good stone on the other side they didn’t see. And they got all three of them by the neck and put them in the compactor of the one that was 1,000 feet high. And when the moving stones compact, they move up and down inside and it makes them have all sorts of bumps and rings outside. Then the moving stones went to a new castle and the new castle fell down, too, and then they went to another new castle that almost never fell down. And then they rolled out and there were still some more bad guys that they got because they had hammers and axes. They got them because they moved out. One moving stone went rolling back and forth, back and forth, and it was 10,000 feet high. And there was a bad guy in front of him and his axes were 400 feet long. His axes swung down and killed the bad guy. There were still some moving stones and guess what happened? There was even a stone 2,000,000 feet tall. And it punched the bad guy. And he’s dead. And there’s more and more moving stones being made.

Breaking News!

. . . pun fully intended. Felix broke his arm yesterday on the playground at school. But let's hear it in his own words:

I was at the playground. And I fell off the bouncy bridge. And I broke my arm because it twisted really hard. And I went to the Children's Memorial Hospital. And I got an X-ray and a cast. And at the Children's Hospital I saw a ball contraption and it was turned off, because the little motor that made the balls go around wasn't spinning--it didn't make the balls go around the chain. That's the whole story!

He chose this picture:

Here's another version of the story, as told to Fuzzy Fuzzy Fuzzy the manta ray:

He's doing fine, although the rest of the summer will certainly be a bit different from the one we had planned. The first big challenge: finding a shirt that will fit over his arm!

May Days, Part 3

The last big event from May: Cosmo's last day in Room 5. (As a 3-year-old, it's time to go to a mixed-age classroom.) He brought flowers for his teachers: Miss Donna . . .


. . . Miss Milica . . .


. . . and Miss Carol, the head teacher. Miss Carol adores Cosmo, and has called him a "model citizen." She also told us, "He has it all: brains, looks, and charm."

On to Room 3! (And, soon, on to June!)

May Days, Part 2

More photos from Wildlife Prairie State Park.

May Days

Seems like it's been ages since we posted any photos. Here we go, all the way back to May, back when Felix was a mere four years old. (Cosmo, of course, was already three.)




The kids really enjoyed our visit to Wildlife State Park. There was wildlife, of course, but more importantly, there were trains. Trains small . . .


. . . and big.


(We stayed in the caboose on the end.) There was also a train, medium-sized, for riding.

For Father's Day, Straight Talk about Money

At bedtime tonight, after lights-out.

Felix: Daddy, can we take the train to St. Louis this year?
Keir: I don't think we're going to go to St. Louis. We do want to take a train trip this year, but we haven't decided where we're going yet.
F: Did you know that sometimes the train goes to New York City? It goes to St. Louis, but sometimes it goes to New York, too.
K: I did know that.
F: You can take Amtrak to St. Louis for $28, to New York for $60, and there's a third place but I forget what it was.
K: ...was Mommy telling you about these prices last summer?
F: No, there was a sign on the bus.
K: Well, those sound like some pretty good prices.
F: How much money do we have? Do we have $70? I think we have $70.
K: We have more money than that.
F: Do we have in the hundreds?
K: We actually have thousands of dollars.
F: (astonished) We have thousands of dollars, so we must be rich. But rich people have gems.
K: Well, Mommy has a couple of gems.
F: (cackling) We have thousands of dollars!
K: We can't spend all of it on train travel.

More Mystery Meat & Construction Conundrums

On the bus home from school:

K: Cosmo, what did you have for lunch today?
C: I had meat for lunch.
K: What kind of meat?
C: I don't know what kind it was.
K: Was it chicken? Or turkey?
C: It was just plain meat.

Felix, after leaning forward and bonking his head on a kitchen cabinet door (while standing on a chair):

F: Whoever constructed these cabinets didn't do a very good job. They shouldn't have put them in the place where they put them. Because, if someone is standing here and the cabinet door is open, they bonk their head.

Mother's Day

The Truth: Always a Tricky Proposition

The other night while I was making dinner, I heard a loud thump and then Cosmo started crying. I looked in to the living room and saw Cosmo in a heap behind the couch. Felix was dancing around with a suspicious look on his face. However, being the fair-minded father that I am, and mindful of the fact that Cosmo had tumbled off the back of the couch two other times in as many days, I did not leap to conclusions.

First, I comforted the crying child.

Then, and only then, did I seek to assign blame.

K: Cosmo, what happened?

C: Felix pushded me off the couch!

K: Felix, is that true?

F: No, he just fell off all by himself.

[Short ad lib wherein Cosmo again affirms that he was pushed.)

F: He's lying! He's lying!

C: He pushded me.

K: Well, you can't both be right. One of you isn't telling the truth.

F: I think maybe it might even be my little brother.

Talking Toilets

Cosmo, yielding a snap block creation: This is my gun. It shoots talking toilets and big cars at the bad queen.

***

Felix: When I grow up I want to be an artist Monday through Friday and an engineer on the weekends because I'm better at art than at being an engineer.

recent photos

My Son, the Vulcan

The last two weekends, Felix has ridden his bike along with me while I went running. He's done really well, going about two miles each time. (And when he's going full speed I have to run all out to keep up with him.) Today, he made the following observations.

F: Daddy, it seems to me that, every time I ride my bike, everything that is man-made seems to be moving.

Later:

F: Dad, stop! You're going too fast! The speed limit is: no faster than Felix.

Everything's Relative

Having run breathlessly from driveway to driveway.

Felix: Guess what? I ran ten and a half miles per speed. It's not as fast as miles per hour, but it's still pretty fast.

He Doesn't Go in For That High-End Butchery

Keir: Cosmo, what did you have for lunch today?
Cosmo: I had milk and fruit and vegetable and meat.
Keir: What kind of meat did you have?
Cosmo: Just regular meat.

Hairy Transportation Issues

Every night at bedtime, Felix and Cosmo demand a new story about my life as a younger person. I am running out of material. (Depressing how quickly it's happened.) Last night, Cosmo rubbed my whiskery face ("Daddy, you need to shave tomorrow") which led me to tell them about the trials and tribulations of learning to shave. (As I said, I'm running out of material.)

Felix: I don't ever want to shave. I just want to get all hairy.

Next, I told them about my college days, when I couldn't afford to fly between Montana and Massachusetts and therefore rode the Greyhound bus.

Felix: But now we're rich, and we have lots of money, so you don't have to ride the Greyhound bus anymore. You can ride the CTA bus! It's a lot faster. Instead of taking three days, it just takes an evening.

Cosmo: Yes! We have lots and lots of money!

(Not sure where they're getting this--though, to be fair, they have missed the recent all-staff meetings at Mommy and Daddy's work.)

Happy Birthday, Cosmo!

Cosmo had a super 3rd birthday. Grandma Neva, Grandpa Dick, and Auntie Iris were visiting and took him and Felix to the Children's Museum - what could be better?!

Our little one is getting so big.

Vacation Ideas

While eating breakfast recently, Felix, Cosmo and I go on the topic of vacation destinations. Felix has definite ideas about where he wants to go.

F: I know where we can go on vacation: Iowa!
M: Sure, we can go there someday, but I don't think there is much to see or do there.
F: But we HAVE to go there because Iowa doesn't have earthquakes, volcanoes, or hurricanes!
Then, I turned a page in the newspaper to discover a picture of Rio de Janiero:
C: We can go there!
F: No, Cosmo. We can't go there because there are a lot of earthquakes there.
M: I don't think there are many earthquakes in Rio.
F: How would you know that?! You are not a scientist; you are an architect.

A Couple of Sprocket-Heads

At the bike shop on Saturday.

Dear Lightning McQueen

Felix and Cosmo love the movie Cars. Last night, we watched it for the second time. Today, Marya found Cars-branded notepads for the boys. Felix christened his with--what else?--a mash note to Lightning McQueen.
(Dear Lightning McQueen, I do not love Chick Hicks [the bad race car], but I love you)
(I love you; I do)
(Lovely Lightning McQueen, I have to give you 1,000 presents; all your presents will be Lightning McQueen bugs [a play on a nice visual joke in the movie, where the "bugs" are tiny Volkswagen Beetles])
(You will love your presents! Lucky Lightning McQueen loves stickers)
(The best car in the whole world. I love Tow Mater [the tow truck--"tomater"--get it?)