good websites
Date: Jun 13th, 2008 2:54:26 am - Subscribe
Mood: better
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romance
Date: Jun 13th, 2008 2:29:22 am - Subscribe
Mood: zealous
Located in the checkroom in Union Station as I am, I see everybody that comes up the stairs.
Harry came in a little over three years ago and waited at the head of the stairs for the passengers from the 9∶08 train.
I remember seeing Harry that first evening. He wasn’t much more than a thin, anxious kid then. He was all dressed up and I knew he was meeting his girl and that they would be married twenty minutes after she arrived.
Well, the passengers came up and I had to get busy. I didn’t look toward the stairs again until nearly time for the 9∶18 and I was very surprised to see that the young fellow was still there.
She didn’t come on the 9∶18 either, nor on the 9∶40, and when the passengers from the 10∶02 had all arrived and left, Harry was looking pretty desperate. Pretty soon he came close to my window so I called out and asked him what she looked like.
"She’s small and dark," he said, "and nineteen years old and very neat in the way she walks. She has a face," he said, thinking a minute, "that has lots of spirit. I mean she can get mad but she never stays mad for long, and her eyebrows come to a little point in the middle. She’s got a brown fur, but maybe she isn’t wearing it."
I couldn’t remember seeing anybody like that.
He showed me the telegram he’d received: ARRIVE THURSDAY. MEET ME STATION. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE. MAY. It was from Omaha, Nebraska.
"Well," I finally said, "why don’t you phone to your home? She’s probably called there if she got in ahead of you."
He gave me a sick look. "I’ve only been in town two days. We were going to meet and then drive down South where I’ve got a job. She hasn’t any address for me." He touched the telegram.
When I came on duty the next day he was still there and came over as soon as he saw me.
"Did she work anywhere?" I asked.
He nodded. "She was a typist. I telegraphed her former boss. All they know is that she left her job to get married."
Harry met every train for the next three or four days. Of course, the railroad lines made a routine checkup and the police looked into the case. But nobody was any real help. I could see that they all figured that May had simply played a trick on2 him. But I never believed that, somehow.
One day, after about two weeks, Harry and I were talking and I told him about my theory. "If you’ll just wait long enough," I said, "you’ll see her coming up those stairs some day." He turned and looked at the stairs as though he had never seen them before.
The next day when I came to work Harry was behind the counter of Tony’s magazine stand. He looked at me rather sheepishly and said, "Well, I had to get a job somewhere, didn’t I?"
So he began to work as a clerk for Tony. We never spoke of May anymore and neither of us ever mentioned my theory. But I noticed that Harry always saw every person who came up the stairs.
Toward the end of the year Tony was killed in some argument over gambling, and Tony’s widow left Harry in complete charge of the magazine stand. And when she got married again some time later, Harry bought the stand from her. He borrowed money and installed a soda fountain and pretty soon he had a very nice little business.
Then came yesterday. I heard a cry and a lot of things falling. The cry was from Harry and the things falling were a lot of dolls and other things which he had upset while he was jumping over the counter. He ran across and grabbed a girl not ten feet from my window. She was small and dark and her eyebrows came to a little point in the middle.
For a while they just hung there to each other laughing and crying and saying things without meaning. She’d say a few words like, "It was the bus station I meant" and he’d kiss her speechless and tell her the many things he had done to find her. What apparently had happeded three years before was that May had come by bus, not by train, and in her telegram she meant "bus station," not "railroad station." She had waited at the bus station for days and had spent all her money trying to find Harry. Finally she got a job typing.
"What?" said Harry. "Have you been working in town? All the time?"
She nodded.
"Well, Heavens. Didn’t you ever come down here to the station?" He pointed across to his magazine stand. "I’ve been there all the time. I own it. I’ve watched everybody that came up the stairs."
She began to look a little pale. Pretty soon she looked over at the stairs and said in a weak voice, "I never came up the stairs before. You see, I went out of town yesterday on a short business trip. Oh, Harry!" Then she threw her arms around his neck and really began to cry.
After a minute she backed away and point
ed very stiffly toward the north end of the station. "Harry, for three years, for three solid years, I’ve been right over there working right in this very station, typing, in the office of the stationmaster."
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a gift of love
Date: Jun 13th, 2008 2:27:51 am - Subscribe
Mood: deep
In 1945, a 12-year-old boy saw something in a shop window that set his heart racing. But the price—five dollars—was far beyond Reuben Earle's means. Five dollars would buy almost a week's groceries for his family.
Reuben couldn't ask his father for the money. Everything Mark Earle made through fishing in Bay Roberts, Newfoundland, Canada. Reuben's mother, Dora, stretched like elastic to feed and clothe their five children.
Nevertheless, he opened the shop's weathered door and went inside. Standing proud and straight in his flour-sack shirt and washed-out trousers, he told the shopkeeper what he wanted, adding, "But I don't have the money right now. Can you please hold it for me for some time?"
"I'll try," the shopkeeper smiled. " Folks around here don't usually have that kind of money to spend on things. It should keep for a while."
Reuben respectfully touched his worn cap and walked out into the sunlight with the bay rippling in a freshening wind. There was purpose in his loping stride5. He would raise the five dollars and not tell anybody.
Hearing the sound of hammering from a side street, Reuben had an idea.
He ran towards the sound and stopped at a construction site. People built their own homes in Bay Roberts, using nails purchased in Hessian sacks from a local factory. Sometimes the sacks were discarded in the flurry of building, and Reuben knew he could sell them back to the factory for five cents a piece.
That day he found two sacks, which he took to the rambling wooden factory and sold to the man in charge of packing nails.
The boy's hand tightly clutched the five-cent pieces as he ran the two kilometers home.
Near his house stood the ancient barn that housed the family's goats and chickens. Reuben found a rusty soda tin and dropped his coins inside. Then he climbed into the loft of the barn and hid the tin beneath a pile of sweet smelling hay.
It was dinnertime when Reuben got home. His father sat at the big kitchen table, working on a fishing net. Dora was at the kitchen stove, ready to serve dinner as Reuben took his place at the table.
He looked at his mother and smiled. Sunlight from the window gilded her shoulder-length blonde hair. Slim and beautiful, she was the center of the home, the glue that held it together.
Her chores were never-ending. Sewing clothes for her family on the old Singer treadle machine, cooking meals and baking bread, planting and tending a vegetable garden, milking the goats and scrubbing soiled clothes on a washboard. But she was happy. Her family and their well-being were her highest priority.
Every day after chores and school, Reuben scoured the town, collecting the hessian nail bags. On the day the two-room school closed for the summer, no student was more delighted than Reuben. Now he would have more time for his mission.
All summer long, despite chores at home weeding and watering the garden, cutting wood and fetching water—Reuben kept to his secret task.
Then all too soon the garden was harvested, the vegetables canned and stored, and the school reopened. Soon the leaves fell and the winds blew cold and gusty from the bay. Reuben wandered the streets, diligently searching for his hessian treasures.
Often he was cold, tired and hungry, but the thought of the object in the shop window sustained him. Sometimes his mother would ask: "Reuben, where were you? We were waiting for you to have dinner."
"Playing, Mum. Sorry."
Dora would look at his face and shake her head. Boys.
Finally spring burst into glorious green and Reuben's spirits erupted. The time had come! He ran into the barn, climbed to the hayloft and uncovered the tin can. He poured the coins out and began to count.
Then he counted again. He needed 20 cents more. Could there be any sacks left any where in town? He had to find four and sell them before the day ended.
Reuben ran down Water Street.
The shadows were lengthening when Reuben arrived at the factory. The sack buyer was about to lock up.
"Mister! Please don't close up yet."
The man turned and saw Reuben, dirty and sweat stained.
"Come back tomorrow, boy."
"Please, Mister. I have to sell the sacks now—please."The man heard a tremor in Reuben's voice and could tell he was close to tears.
"Why do you need this money so badly?"
"It's a secret."
The man took the sacks, reached into his pocket and put four coins in Reuben's hand. Reuben murmured a thank you and ran home.
Then, clutching the tin can, he headed for the shop.
"I have the money," he solemnly told the owner.
The man went to the window and retrieved Reuben's treasure.
He wiped the dust off and gently wrapped it in brown paper. Then he placed the parcel in Reuben's hands.
Racing home, Reuben burst through the front door. His mother was scrubbing the kitchen stove. "Here, Mum! Here!" Reuben exclaimed as he ran to her side. He placed a small box in her work roughened hand.
She unwrapped it carefully, to save the paper. A blue-velvet jewel box appeared. Dora lifted the lid, tears beginning to blur her vision.
In gold lettering on a small, almond-shaped brooch was the word Mother.
It was Mother's Day, 1946.
Dora had never received such a gift; she had no finery except her wedding ring. Speechless, she smiled radiantly and gathered her son into her arms.
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