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Jack Balas, 2024
THE TRAIN SET (BUT THIS IS NOT MY STORY) (#2703)
India ink on joined paper, 30 x 24 inches

Text:
IT WASN'T EVEN HIS OWN STORY BUT A FRIEND'S, of a boy who wanted a train set for Christmas. The oldest of eight kids whose father was in a bad construction accident and wound up in the hospital near death a month before Christmas. The church took up a collection for the family, and he and his brothers and sisters were afraid they might all wind up being adopted. The boy hoped it would be by some rich guy who would buy him a train set, but gloriously his father survived and made it home two days before Christmas. The boy did not get a train set, but did get a new pair of boots. He put them on and walked out across the frozen lake, and when he turned around he could see the town with its tiny lights ascending the hillside, and when he squinted it looked like a miniature train set. He looked at his house there and thought that that house was Christmas, that whatever they did in that house was Christmas, and that was all they would need.
     BUT THIS IS NOT MY STORY. Garrison K. (Keillor) told it on his radio show over 40 years ago, and I just heard it the other day. And besides, I had a train set growing up. But there has been something I've longed for, for over forty years, and listening now makes me see it differently. If it could be boxed and wrapped like a Christmas gift, I'd say you know? The real gift I already have is my studio and a painting like this on the easel, and the people who come to see it: YOU.
(Today is Christmas Day, Wednesday December 25, 2024)