Beware of ghost trains

Yesterday I took Desmond and Nini to MOMA, where they seemed underwhelmed by everything except the promos for the Tim Burton exhibit (which was sold out). However, our journey uptown was not without event. Instead of the D train we were waiting for, a strange train of what looked like ordinary subway cars, minus the windows, drove without stopping through the station. I told them that this was a ghost train, taken only by ghosts.

Laura: Ghost trains don't stop at the regular stations.

Nini: No, they only stop at haunted stations, at bridges and tunnels.

Laura: True.

Nini: Where are the ghosts on the ghost train going?

Laura: I don't know.

Nini: Probably to a party, a big party with cake.

Laura: Do ghosts eat cake? I didn't think ghosts could eat food.

Desmond: It's ghost food. Probably cake that somebody else has already eaten

...

Nini : I want you to promise me something.

Laura: What is it?

Nini: If you go into a subway station, and a ghost train pulls in, I want you to promise me you will NOT get on it.

Laura: All right, I promise I won't get on a ghost train.

Nini: Not even if the doors are wide open?

Laura: Not even then.

Comments

[Jim]

Do you know about the ghost stations in Berlin? They were old, 30s era stations on the Berlin subway system, and when the city was divided after WWII, the ones in East Berlin got sealed off, so that if you rode on a West Berlin line that happened to cut through part of the east, you'd occasionally pass through these old, empty, unlit white tile stations with the name of the stop in old Gothic German script. I'm not sure they're there anymore, but I rode through one in 1991 or 92, and it was very spooky.

[Richard Johnson]

What was your favorite thing at MOMA?

[Laura Miller]

To be honest, I didn't pay much attention, as I was mostly trying to keep track of Desmond, who likes to strike out on his own, and make sure we didn't displease the extremely controlling guards. What the kids liked best was a sort of spotlight that projected a red theatrical curtain against the wall. They made shadows dancing in front of it for quite a while.