Ferguson Street Station
Original composition date lost - pre 2008 | journal
If I'd taken a left-hand turn instead of a right-hand turn, I'd eventually have walked straight into the lake. Some freakish sense of self-preservation saved me at the last minute (I can't swim, you see) and sent me trudging through the snow at the "dedicated to our glorious past” fake train-station; equipped with fake building, fake luggage trolley, fake flat-car, fake signal towers, and equally fake tracks.
Why they gate off the open-air building is beyond me. Perhaps they're afraid the homeless might seek shelter tucked against the inner wall of a building no one seems to visit except me when I'm homeward bound. It's all part of a once vital downtown core, whose vitality could use a little urban Viagra if such a thing existed. Sometime in the past twenty years, an erosion began that I didn' notice until it was all over, and too late for anything but lamentations.
Every time I go past our glorious fake train station, I think of One-Handed Connie. We don't know why One-Handed Connie is one-handed, nor do we even know who she is. But we think of her with fond humour, and figure that she's one-handed because that's all she needs.