{"id":265,"date":"2021-03-10T01:27:05","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T01:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dantejspado.com\/?p=265"},"modified":"2021-03-10T03:52:13","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T03:52:13","slug":"the-time-i-lived-out-the-events-of-stand-by-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dantejspado.com\/index.php\/2021\/03\/10\/the-time-i-lived-out-the-events-of-stand-by-me\/","title":{"rendered":"The time I lived out the events of Stand By Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Dante Spado<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week I wrote a blog about the time I lived through the events of The Sandlot<\/em><\/a>. I mentioned how it\u2019s 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<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re unfamiliar with Stand By Me<\/em>, it\u2019s a movie based on a Stephen King book where four boys embark on an adventure to find a dead body. And no, I\u2019ll stop your imagination from running wild here. I did NOT find a dead body. But there\u2019s one VERY specific and iconic scene in the movie that I did live through, and that\u2019s the train scene<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s Hollywood, the train comes as they\u2019re crossing the vast stretch of track over the river far below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I know what you\u2019re thinking. \u201cDante, why would you ever be crossing train tracks above a river?\u201d Allow me to fill you in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many summers, my mom\u2019s parents (Pop and Doey) had a campsite in the Adirondack Mountains<\/a>. 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\u2019d ride down the natural lazy river several times a day, and it was one of my favorite parts about visiting the campsite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The view of the river from my grandparent’s site. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One time we took my dad\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u201clazy river\u201d 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t 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, \u201chardly ever.\u201d So with that information in mind, we hopped on the tracks and started the walk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t exactly a stealthy group. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were walking along the train tracks, which were suspended a good twenty feet above the water, when suddenly we heard the \u201cwhoot whooot\u201d of a train whistle in the distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
I did some digging and found the train tracks we crossed. Now you know why we didn’t just jump off.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

 I think we all turned as white as ghosts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/em> 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
We looked a little something like this.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s probably a story for another time. I\u2019m pretty sure Pop and Doey had to walk on the tracks again to get back to the car. At that point, I don\u2019t think you could\u2019ve paid me to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thankfully this story has a different ending than Stand By Me<\/em>, as there was no dead body, but boy were we close. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dante Spado Last week I wrote a blog about the time I lived through the events of The Sandlot. I mentioned how it\u2019s 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\u2019re unfamiliar with Stand By Me,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dantejspado.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dantejspado.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dantejspado.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dantejspado.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dantejspado.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dantejspado.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":269,"href":"https:\/\/dantejspado.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions\/269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dantejspado.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dantejspado.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dantejspado.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}