By Dante Spado
Last week I wrote a blog about the time I lived through the events of The Sandlot. I mentioned how it’s not often that something in your life happens the way it did in a movie. But then I got to thinking, and I remembered a time when I was in about the sixth grade where I lived through the events of Stand By Me.
If you’re unfamiliar with Stand By Me, it’s a movie based on a Stephen King book where four boys embark on an adventure to find a dead body. And no, I’ll stop your imagination from running wild here. I did NOT find a dead body. But there’s one VERY specific and iconic scene in the movie that I did live through, and that’s the train scene.
At one point in the movie, the boys have to walk along train tracks that go over a river. The tracks are suspended high in the air, like a bridge. And of course, because it’s Hollywood, the train comes as they’re crossing the vast stretch of track over the river far below.
Now I know what you’re thinking. “Dante, why would you ever be crossing train tracks above a river?” Allow me to fill you in.
For many summers, my mom’s parents (Pop and Doey) had a campsite in the Adirondack Mountains. They would live in their R.V. for the warm summer months, and my family and I would always visit for a few days. Their campsite was right on the Moose River, and as kids, my sister and I would float down the river for a few hundred feet to a man-made beach area in the park. We’d ride down the natural lazy river several times a day, and it was one of my favorite parts about visiting the campsite.
One time we took my dad’s parents (Grandma and Grandpa) with us up from Syracuse, so all four of my grandparents were there. My Grandpa was always a big kid at heart, and he floated down the river with my sister and me a few times that day. Eventually, one of Pop and Doey’s campsite neighbors saw us tubing and told us that you could drive on roads alongside the river a few miles and get onto the river to make a longer, hour-long “lazy river” ride. He said he did it all the time, and my grandparents kind of knew him, so they trusted him. He told us it was really easy to find the spot and he explained to us how to get there. The only caveat was that we would have to walk along some train tracks that crossed over the river.
So, my mom, dad, sister, Grandpa, Pop, Doey and I drove up to the spot the man told us to go to. Pop and Doey didn’t plan on tubing, but my Grandpa did. The seven of us carried the big inflatable tubes and walked to the train tracks. It was a LONG stretch of tracks. My mom immediately asked Doey how often the train comes and Doey said something along the lines of, “hardly ever.” So with that information in mind, we hopped on the tracks and started the walk.
I need to paint the picture for you. There were seven of us walking in a line. At this point in time, my grandparents were all in their early 70s, and my sister and I were about 11 and 9, respectively. We also were carrying five MASSIVE inflatable tubes. We weren’t exactly a stealthy group.
We were walking along the train tracks, which were suspended a good twenty feet above the water, when suddenly we heard the “whoot whooot” of a train whistle in the distance.
I think we all turned as white as ghosts.
We immediately started running, but remember, three of the members in our party were past their running days, and another two had short legs. It looked hopeless.
The train covered the distance between us and it pretty quickly. We were gaining on the hill where the tracks connected to the land, but the train was moving faster. I kid you not, it was EXACTLY like Stand By Me. One by one, we all got to the hill and jumped off. It was a steep slope, and I think some of us slipped down a bit. Pop was the last one in line, and I remember him hopping off the tracks with no more than two seconds to spare. It was a buzzer-beater.
We were all rattled, but thankfully unscathed. I think we had that state of shock adrenaline rush thing going on. I mean we literally outran a train. The five of us who were tubing loaded up on the river, and the tubing did NOT go as planned, but that’s probably a story for another time. I’m pretty sure Pop and Doey had to walk on the tracks again to get back to the car. At that point, I don’t think you could’ve paid me to.
Thankfully this story has a different ending than Stand By Me, as there was no dead body, but boy were we close. It’s a fun story to tell now, but it was pretty scary at the time. After surviving the train a few years ago and the dog a few weeks ago, I just hope my days of living through movie events are over.