13 Buttons

This Mid-Missouri Memory is about a special love in my life. Those smoke belching, steam spitting trains that ran through Sedalia while I grew up just two blocks away. Was anything more frightening, and at the same time more fascinating to small children? I don’t think so.

The bell bottom thirteen button gaberdine uniform I owned for a short time as a young sailor is still, in my mind, the coolest thing I have ever worn, in or out of the navy. Just re-reading this memory makes me long for the feel and look of them.