Memories

It`s five o’clock in the afternoon, and I look at the sky because It’s getting dark due to the clouds, which announce it’s going to rain soon in our city. I hope so.

As a result of this event, I stay at home because it’s too cold either outside or inside, besides I’ve got a sore throat, so what I want is to be near the fire and if it’s possible, to rest in my favourite sofa, so when I begin to move it, I come across a toy of my grandson. It’s a train! Immediately my memories come to my mind, when I went to Constitución in that old train, in order to spend one day of our vacations. Of course in those times my mother carried coal, to be more precise, she cooked on the beach. Cooking with coal on the beach was a very different experience from today, and also it had some remarkable effects.

Forty two years ago, there was only one train that traveled in the morning to Constitución. Therefore all the families wanted to go there, but you couldn’t book seats like nowadays, you had to get up early; you had to go to train station and get some seats and put your bag gage on them, so people knew that they were taken. If not you had to be standing during the trip. Today most of the people can travel by car; otherwise there are many means of transport to go. Everywhere apart from that in my time, people ate during the journey because the train took a long time to travel from Talca to Constitución, and all the mothers carried boiled eggs, coffee, bread, in some cases, they cut tomatoes, and we, the children began to eat. Oh, I also remember the train stopped in “Gonzalez Bastías” which it’s a cottage between Talca and” Conti”, there we could buy “tortillas” for the rest of the day. As well, I remember the air inside the train, you could smell food everywhere, and some people carried live chickens in order to kill them on the beach, while others carried dead chicken ready to be cooked. Nowadays, none of that exists, in fact, most young people can feel embarrassed by those situations, however for us it was the most common .Finally, I can say that the landscape was beautiful. I looked through the window of the train at all the hills and beautiful trees, they were more natural than now, their green colors were really powerful.

My mother carried coal and a grill so that she had to cook on the beach, while we enjoyed swimming, but there were some problems due to that fact, for instance; the strong winds that arose, made sand get into the food, however it still tasted good, and another experience related to that issue, it was that we couldn’t run on the beach, I mean most of the families had their own burning coal everywhere. Otherwise, it was delightful to warm our hands on the coal after swimming in the sea, and when the day was getting dark, coal had the mission to protect us from the cold.

What a lovely memory! I can’t imagine that a simple toy produced such sensation in my mind, and a little train made me remember part of my summer childhood, and now that time makes me homesick, my nice family on the beach, and we were really happy, I would like that the past stayed for ever. Because of this, I called my mother and told her what I’ve remembered, she laughed. After, I began to look for some pictures from that time, of course I found two. I’m going to buy some coal and I’ll prepare a roast meat in my yard and I´ll be inviting my family in order to talk about that experience of the past.

By Erika Reyes