Vol. 78, December 12th, 2023 Published a day early online
In The Still of The Night
An Answer
“Josh, what do you do when you can’t sleep?”
A friend’s voice echoed in my head from a sunny Tuesday. She told me the Sandman had been elusive lately.
I’ve described myself as a hummingbird in suspenders, and that usually guarantees a deep slumber. But here I sit, listening to the refrigerator and a few raindrops outside the window, falling unseen in the pre-dawn darkness.
Maybe it was the coffee too late in the afternoon. Maybe the computer threw off my sleep cycle, or the mad dash towards Christmas that wound me up. Does your brain have a little sign up in the window that says awkward memories and to-do list additions, please call between 2 and 4 am? (I’m asking for a friend.)
Unable to sleep, I finally got up to work on this newsletter. It’s the perfect thing to do. The whole point of the paper is to remind you (and me) that there’s someone else out there.
You might feel like you’re the only one awake in a long, dark night, but there’s at least two of us. So I’m doing the best thing I can think of. I’m writing a friend. Feel free to write back.
And hey look, it’s almost dawn.
Happy Hanukkah
Wishing you a bright and peaceful Hanukkah in these tumultuous times. Chag sameach! (Happy holiday.)
May the candles shine.
Quote of the Week
“Truth is like the Sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t going away.”
- Elvis Presley
Happy Birthday “Saturday Night Fever”
The iconic film starring John Travolta premieres Dec. 12th, 1977 in NYC.
Book of the Week: A Christmas Carol
(Charles Dickens)
Many credit this 1843 work as sparking a Christmas renaissance (see The Man Who Invented Christmas).
The movies are great, the book is better.
(Snag this first edition from Sotheby’s for a cool 24 grand. Complementary shipping.)
An American Christmas
While England boasts Scrooge, we’ve got Reagan selling Chesterfields for Christmas in this 1952 ad. ‘MURICA!
Write to Us!
The Nighthawk is a new old-fashioned way to connect, published weekly. You’re invited to write back, or just enjoy reading. Let’s have some fun! It’s a social paper! Send stories, etc to: PO Box 783, Rustburg, VA 24588 or Joshurban@protonmail.com
Letters from Josh
(A weekly update from Josh Urban’s adventures on the farm and in the city. #164)
Appearing in the Altavista Journal: Late Night Radio “Christmas Tree Station”
Howdy, folks, and welcome back to the show. They say to dress for the job you want, but a tasing seems likely if a conductor on the Polar Express outfit is worn to Walmart. Santa, if you’re listening, skip the presents. All I need is a uniform and the opportunity to work that fabled line.
In the meantime, the train around the tree will have to do, and it’s a darn good consolation prize. It was over a hundred years ago when Lionel started this marvelous tradition with their newfangled electric toy trains.
I’ve always liked trains, toy or real. Dad would take me to watch the freights roll down the old Baltimore & Ohio tracks after family trips to the store. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the expectation in the air, and the growl of the diesels charging towards us, more mechanical dragon than everyday human invention. The roar and rumble would blast past us, hurtling onward to somewhere else. The quiet after the train felt like a concert hall when the instruments are packed away, last echoes of the steel symphony ringing in the rails.
But my favorite is a train under the Christmas tree, and the seasonal memories it brings. Do you remember peering through a long-forgotten window on main street at a shop display? Or watching the tiny zephyr make it’s way through a landscape of wrapped presents and a warm glow? It’s the Santa Fe, red and silver! The possibilities, the mysteries, the echoes of the grownups talking mingled with the smell of spruce.
I’ve put tracks under my tree, but the itch to make a whole set, to build a winter scene kept nagging at me. Bills and schedules outweighed it, until the excuse showed up. For the Children! Except they weren’t kids. The senior citizens I worked with needed some cheer, locked down during COVID at the retirement home. They’d like a train set!
So, sawdust flew, and tracks appeared. Miniature spruce trees showed up from eBay, the bite of molten solder hung in the garage air, and the tiny street lights flickered to life. (Pro tip: kitty litter turns to mush, and doesn’t look at all like railroad ballast lining the track. Spend the money on the hobby grade stuff.) Ordinary glue and insulation foam turned into a frigid landscape. There was a tunnel, and a painted blue sky, and craggy rocks. A little locomotive pulled a freight into the station with the goods for Christmas dinner and presents Santa couldn’t deliver.
And there we were, under the crushing weight of the pandemic lockdown, with a model railroad. You might think few things profoundly useless as a toy train set. But–something strange happened. We all loved it. There was a sparkle about it, a fleeting memory, something to marvel at in a dreary time. We gathered and tinkered with it, adding to it, putting the train back on the tracks when it invariably fell off (stupid kitty litter). The miniature street lights glowed in the evening, and it felt like a slice of Christmas in a world that acted like a hospital.
So while I’ll never be a conductor on the Polar Express, there are other ways to travel to memory lane this time of year. May your season have a glimpse of a little train rolling through pine-scented air and the glow of a Christmas tree, or a pleasant memory of Santa’s railroad long ago. All aboard!
–Josh