From their porch, they could hear the train whistle echoing off houses and street signs. The deep bellow filled the clouds passing lazily over their heads and thumped their chests in a continual burst. The boy's blue eyes lit up and his father threw up in his hands in feigned surprise. Jumping up, the father scooped the 4-year-old boy and ran to the car. The child buckled himself into his car seat while the father plopped behind the steering wheel. The boy could see only the father's eyes in the rear-view mirror.
"Ready?" the father asked. The towheaded boy gave a thumbs-up and watched as his father's eyes closed slightly with a smile.
Treasure comes in simple forms for a boy. The father often shook his head at the items he pulled from his son's pockets before the washing machine. Interesting rocks, a Coke can tab, pennies. All embodied treasure in a boy's eyes.
The father piloted the car through stop signs and down hills, making verbal screeching noises to embellish the speed. He said, "I wonder where this one is going? Maybe to Tokyo. Maybe to the North Pole. Maybe to Cleveland ..." The boy clapped his hands in blissful geographic ignorance. All destinations sounded exotic and curious.
Whipping into the train station in downtown Little Rock just moments later, the father let loose one last exaggerated screech as the car came to a stop. Frantically unbuckling the many car-seat straps, the father grabbed the boy's hand and they ran for the gate that allowed them onto the tracks. They looked up and down. A mammoth canary yellow engine sat idling before them with box cars and tank cars lined up to the closing horizon behind it.
The father fished in his pockets dramatically and looked at the boy with an open-mouth Oh no! expression. The boy mimicked it until the father smiled and pulled out a handful of pennies. The boy danced again, clapping his hands and stomping his feet. Looking to a sign that read "Do NOT Place Objects on the Tracks," the father bent down and put the pennies on the nearest rail. He looked to the mammoth engine and saw the engineer watching him. The engineer smiled and saluted.
Stepping back from the tracks, father and son waited ... and waited ... and waited ... until finally the boy became distracted long enough to walk behind his father. When the father turned, the boy was chewing gum. "Where'd you get that?" he inquired. The boy's angel-blue eyes glowed in his secret find. He pointed at the litter blown ground near the tracks. The father scooped him up and squeezed his cheeks until the boy gave up the gum. "Son, that's just plain gross. More importantly, don't tell Mom this happened. Deal?" The father stuck his thumb up and the boy mimicked it.
With a quick blast of the horn the train moved, the engineer smiling as he tooted the horn again in an audible farewell. The boy danced at the sight of the pennies being squashed again and again by silver-rimmed wheels. When the last car finished, the father held the boy back--partly because of safety and mostly to build up excitement. When he unleashed him, the boy snatched up the flattened pennies and held them aloft. Treasure.
Last weekend, the father watched the boy graduate from college. When the boy's name was announced, he walked across the platform and gave a slight thumbs-up to his mother and father who sat near the stage holding hands. Those good seats were open because they were in the direct sunlight and heat of the quadrangle, but the boy's parents didn't mind. They wanted to see their son.
As he shook hands with the vice-chancellor and exited the stage, the boy looked again to his parents and held the diploma aloft just a little, a small indicator of his pride. The father went back to the train tracks in his mind. Back to the canary engine and back to the squashed pennies. He knew his wife was scanning her own unique memories in that way and knew not to disturb her. Instead, he thought of his boy holding his treasure in hand. No longer would pennies do.
The opportunity to find treasure becomes more complicated with time. More profoundly, the opportunity to recognize treasure becomes more difficult. From pennies squashed on tracks to diplomas earned through hard work, there is deep change in what we describe as treasure. But, the older one gets, the more one realizes that kids have it right after all.
The treasure is never found in the penny or in the diploma or any tangible thing. The treasure is the time spent together squashing pennies. The treasure is the events and emotions and education in that diploma. The treasure is in the clasped hands of a mom and dad who, in their son's blue eyes, saw those ticking minutes of time well spent.
The day after the father returned home from the graduation, he filled his pockets with pennies. He drove by a few schools in his neighborhood and let the pennies drop from his window hoping they'd be found by children heading to class. Though not squashed by trains, he imagined the pennies picked up by little hands with little legs that would erupt into dance at the discovery. He imagined the excited conversations with parents, or the smiles of moms and dads emptying pockets in front of washing machines.
The father imagined the treasure found in the eyes of a child.
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Steve Straessle, whose column appears every other Saturday, is the principal of Little Rock Catholic High School for Boys. You can reach him at sstraessle@lrchs.org.
Editorial on 05/19/2018