The Boxcar Children

Gertrude Chandler Warner is a name I will never forget. It rolls off my tongue like nothing else. I have been thinking about this name since I was a very small child...

Long ago my grandmother used to tend me. I always had the BEST time at her house! She often did really cool things, like bake, cook, "can" things from the home garden (tomatoes, green beans, peaches) and she ALWAYS let me help. She had a talent for entertaining kids with hobbies, treasure hunts, et cetera, and believe-it-or-not, she could even stand on her head despite the fact that it would smash her cute, puffy, purple/gray, once-a-week hairstyle.

I honestly think that she was the "funnest" grandma a person could have. She would often pull out pictures or we would watch "slides" from trips that the family had taken when all my aunts and uncles were younger. She would take us for walks and it was especially fun when we ended up across the street from her house at the elementary school playground. I always looked forward to an excuse to go into her food storage room. It was built into the basement -- it was a very small room in footage and height and it was always organized 'just so'...

One of my all-time FAVORITE memories of Grandma involved sitting on the floor of a bedroom in her house when I was really young. She would pull out books (some were from the walks we took to the local library) and she would read to me. She read AWESOME stories about Curious George, Bible stories from a special Children's Bible story book (I don't remember the name but it was a big, blue book and it had WONDERFUL pictures)... But the best stories that she read were about THE BOXCAR CHILDREN. As I got older, I was still entertained by the things that The Boxcar Children would do; they were the stories that I chose at the library when I got my own library card. To be honest, I think I would probably still prefer to read about these kids and their adventures -- if I only had the time.

I always thought that Alice, Violet, Henry, Benny and Watch had the most wonderful life. I used to imagine what it would be like to live in a red boxcar by a stream; to go hunting for old cups and plates; to make a broom and sweep the boxcar; to store fresh milk in the cool stream...

Oh the things that I could have done -- if only I had a boxcar.

I think another one of the things that made this story special was the fact that my other grandma had an old boxcar on her property. This one was yellow and very dingy. We never got to go into that boxcar because it was Grandpa's tool shed, but I used to pretend that we could.

Oh the fun that I have had!

I wish that I still had the ability to imagine things like I did back then -- stories about how my life could be; about trips that I would take. Just thinking about the possibility of writing interesting stories that people would want to read makes me smile.

Oh the stories I would write if only I had an imaginative brain...