Midwestern Journal

From Freight Trains Chapter "I stood there a minute listening to a scolding from the engine’s whistle. I could feel the draft from the giant railcars, and I could hear their moaning and rumbling. And all this started just as quietly and imperceptibly as a campaign for county clerk." "I told a friend of mine about me hopping freight trains. “Oh, Edward, why don’t you grow up,” was his chastened reply. Later when we were talking, he told me about his plans for his new house. In the basement, he was going to have room for his electric train where it could circle near the furnace by the light of a seventy-five-watt lightbulb." From Dance Chapter "But wait. Something caught my eye, something incongruous, something out of harmony with this dazzling tableau. Why, it was Pierson, sashaying around like a bobsled out of control! Nowhere on God’s green earth are there places immune from blots on the landscape. He danced with relish; the club’s owners were in the business for eleven years, and even they were hard-pressed to recall a dancer with the same disregard for restraint. I hadn’t seen Pierson do so much free-form dancing since the time he caught his hand in the threshing machine." "And his form was as versatile as it was unique; his bottom swore revolution and civil unrest while the top of him voted Republican."