Junior Chamber of Commerce Ruins Museum Forever
Chuck Etheridge
February 19, 2023
I. Museums
Despairing at my advancing heathenism
My parents dragged me to museums,
Art, history, nature, culture:
Poor matches with my hyperactivity.
At the El Paso Museum of Art:
“Don’t touch the paintings.”
At the Centennial Museum:
“Don’t touch the Neandertal.”
At the Magoffin Historic Home:
“Don’t touch anything.”
At the Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez
“No toques nada.”
They tried to drill culture into my thick,
Red-headed skull impermeable to
Talk of brush stroke techniques
Or thousand-year-old pottery shards.
All I heard was, “History
Blah, Blah, Blah, old things.”
I’d fidget, and wiggle, and beg
To be set free, to be let outside.
II. Trains
“Yes,” they said, despairing.
I darted past the guards,
Flew down two flights of stairs,
Burst through double doors into sunshine.
All I needed to be happy was to run.
I slid down a banister, climbed back up,
Rolled down the hill for good measure,
And then ran around back of the building
And fell in love with the museum.
A full-sized steam locomotive sat,
Begging to be climbed. I rang the bell
On top of the boiler,
Used the cowcatcher as a slide,
Dove into the empty coal cart,
Tried to climb into the locked cabin,
Jumped on top of it bellowing, “CHOO, CHOO.”
Even my well-behaved, rarely-spanked,
Good-grade-getting sister loved the train,
Although Sunday dress wearing modesty
Kept her from joining me atop the boiler.
III. Junior Chamber of Commerce
“The museum with the train,” I would beg,
Baffling my delighted parents,
Although I had to look at the stuffed grizzly (scary)
And a diorama called “The Stone Age” first.
Then I could climb all over my beloved train,
The El Paso and Southwestern Locomotive Number 1,
Pretending to be an engineer,
Navigating my train through the Rockies.
My paradise was lost
Due to the evil machinations
Of the El Paso Junior Chamber of Commerce,
Train hating kids in three-piece bankers’ suits.
Or so I pictured them, Disney villains
Taken straight out of Mary Poppins,
Bleating twin evil mantras: “Civic Duty”
And “Preserving our History.”
They erected a steel and glass building around it,
Shielding the train from the elements, from kids like me.
I would stand, nose pressed to the glass,
Telling Locomotive Number One, “I miss you.”
IV. Do Trains Dream?
Old Number One, now imprisoned
Completely indoors In The Railroad
And Transportation Museum of El Paso,
The main exhibit.
“Fully restored,” museum literature says,
And proclaims Old Number One will
“Never have to move again.”
As if that’s a good thing.
Sitting in a glass case, there to be seen,
Forever locked away from human touch,
Its wheels, never allowed to roll again,
Boiler and coal cart forever empty.
Does Engine Number One
Dream in its glass-entombed slumber?
Does it miss daring itself up mountain passes
Carrying lumber, or ore, or people?
Does it miss being busy, being touched
By engineers, by firemen, by railroad workers?
Does it miss being climbed on by children?
Does it miss me?
A self-proclaimed desert rat, Chuck Etheridge was raised in El Paso, Texas. He is the author of three novels, Border Canto and The Desert after Rain, and Chagford Revisited. His poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction have been published in a variety of reviews and anthologized in a number of books, and he has written two plays that have been produced. His most recent work can be found in the Corpus Christi Writers Anthologies, Trek-a-Tanka, Switchgrass Review, and Level Land: Poems for and About the I 35 Corridor.
