Welcome Along Lifes Pathway

I stepped into the depot
of the little country town
And my mind took in the objects
that I viewed as I turned around;
And instead of a man of forty-odd
I am now a boy again
hurrying to figure freight bills
Era the daily trains come in.
I can hear the shriek of the whistle
And the clack of the cars on the track
And the clatter of the telegraph sending it's message back.

I sit at the desk in the corner
which is just the same as then
And the lanky station agent is at my side again.
The same clocks ticks the minutes;
and the self-same smells and feels
Take me back over many years
like the clack of the flying wheels.

I am lost for awhile in my reverie,
and memories flood my mind,
But a glance at the calendar on the wall
Shows I'm a little behind
I blink and look at the numbers
but something is wrong with the date
For instead of nineteen twenty
It is nineteen fifty eight
The world around has been changing;
and progress has had it's way
But like a sentinel out of the past
is this unchanged room today.

Added by Vernon:
And now I work on the railroad.
The same as I did, you see
But instead of the Rock Island
I work for the old U. P.
Instead of figuring freight bills
as I did in that time long ago,
I work on Diesels and turbines which
are sometimes called "The big blow"
And oft as I speed through the country
on the city of Denver or San Francisco
I long for the peace and the quiet
of that boyhood so long ago.

This is written for my brother, Vernon after we visited in Garber Oklahoma where we spent our child hood and later moved to Nebraska where he was an electrician on the staff of the Union Pacific Railroad.