My mom and dad and I are driving the 1954 Chevy Bel-Aire back from somewhere late at night. We're quite a ways from home; perhaps we've been to visit grandmother. I think I'm around 4 or 5 years old. The road we're on has a stretch where the train runs parallel and is just a few yards away. My mom is driving (is my dad drinking?) and a passenger train pulls up right along beside us. My dad turns around to me in the back seat and says, "You've never been on a train, have you?"

I say, "No."

He tells my mom to speed up and find the next place the road crosses the tracks. She looks at him like he's crazy, but she speeds up. (Obviously, he's not only drinking, but he's drunk.)

About 10 minutes later, she has stopped the car at a RR crossing and my dad is out waving a white handkerchief at the train. It stops, and he does some talking to someone on the train. (He was a salesman). The next thing I know, he and I are on the train and the next stop is our home town, about an hour away.

He said I'd go to sleep good on a train. I did.