Going Off the Rails
When we bought that railroad car for $4000 off Craigslist, we didn’t ever considered how we’d transport it. See, my wife had just inherited this big piece of property slap dab in the middle of nowhere somewheres near Wilmington, and we said to ourselves, What’re we gonna do with all that land? And then there’s our son, living at home, taking college through the Internet, griping day and night. And plus we had the $10,000 my wife inherited fifteen years ago from her great-grandmother—she was fortunate when it came to deceased relations—and so we said to our son, Son, if you keep an eye on that property for us, we’ll make sure you have a roof over your head. And lo, and behold! A railroad car weren’t but a quarter the cost of a used mobile home. Deal, I said, Deal! It was only after we wrote the check that we realized there might be difficulties. We got nothing but drawn-out silences and bewildered-like questions from near every trucking company we called. They do mobile homes—you’ve seen them down the highway with their “wide load” yellow tape flapping in the wind—so I thought, Why not railroad cars? But apparently it don’t work like that. Our son found the phone number for the Association of American Railroads, and I called them to see if they couldn’t just bring it on down the line, but the girl who answered their phone just said, Sir, you bought a what? and I could hear her covering up her receiver and laughing. Customer service ain’t what it used to be. Now, this is the last straw in a haystack and so I pay a visit to a buddy of mine who drives a tow truck, and I say, Listen. If you can’t help me, my great-grandmother-in-law’s death is in vain. So we go on down and hitch the railroad car to his tow truck and take it real slow down the interstate. You should have seen the faces of near every motorist we passed.