A magic time

I remember when I was about three or four years old asking my mom to take the screen off the television so I could climb inside and go to the Romper Room. There's something special about that age when places like Sesame Street are real locations somewhere out there.

My son, Saxon, is entering into that stage now. He amazes me every day with the vastness of his imagination and how easily he blends fact and fiction to create a world that is uniquely his. In Saxon's case, that world is populated primarily by talking locomotives and dinosaurs.

Thomas and Friends is one of his favorite shows and our basement rec room is currently home to about a mile of plastic track and a dozen or so brightly colored and distinctly named engines. It's taken me some time, but I can finally tell the difference between Thomas and Edward and Percy and Henry.

I suspect a good many parents have found themselves similarly immersed in the happenings of the Isle of Sodor, but at our house we have the added benefit (?) of living a few hundred feet from the Union Pacific rail line that cuts across Missouri.

When my wife and I first moved into our house, the previous owner assured us that you get used to the trains and you don't even notice them after awhile. Well, after eight years, I still notice them, but I've certainly grown more tolerant of them.

For Saxon, however, the sound of the train whistle is like the voice of a friend coming to visit. More often than not, the train that comes rumbling past will be heading due south loaded with car after car of Wyoming coal. The engines are almost always big yellow diesels, but in Saxon's mind, they are the characters he knows so well.

"That's Gordon," he'll say before telling me which part of the island he's bound for and why. It's not always Gordon, but he seems to be the one Saxon picks the most often, perhaps because Gordon is described as the biggest engine on Sodor and these trains are certainly bigger than anything in our toy boxes.

But, as fond as he is about trains, nothing can compare to the fascination Saxon has for dinosaurs. Saxon will forego just about any activity to learn about dinosaurs and at three years old, he can already name off an impressive list of dinosaur names. Thanks to his TV hero Dino Dan, he can tell you the differences between a triceratops and brachiosaurus without blinking an eye.

This summer we made the trip to Powell Gardens to take in the dinosaur exhibit they had on display. The weather was make-you-melt-into-your-shoes hot, but Saxon was undaunted, running ahead along the trail, anxious to discover the next hadrosaur or stegosaurus. Of course, the highlight of the day came near the end of trail when we at last got to see the 20-foot tall Tyrannosaurus Rex, or "King Rex" as Saxon's calls him.

Over the last year or so, Saxon has amassed a pretty impressive collection of dinosaur toys and he's been known to take a few of the plastic creatures with him to places like church, but wherever he goes, he carries an infinite number of them in his mind.

The other day I was working in the yard, trimming branches, when I noticed Saxon peering intently into a lilac bush. Now, we've found our share of various assorted wildlife in our yard, so I asked him what he had found.

Was it a turtle, or maybe a snake or a toad? Of course not. It was a nest of dinosaur eggs. Since then, we've had numerous dinosaur sightings in locations all across our small farm. I think we've "seen" just about every kind of prehistoric lizard out there, but always lurking is King Rex.

I know that someday Saxon will grow up and give in to the realities of life. There will come a day when we won't get visits from talking tank engines and wayward pterodactyls anymore. But, for now, I happy for the opportunity to step through the television screen once more for visits with our favorite television friends in a rich and fertile land of make believe.