104:174) Eric A. Hochman
Date: 28-APR-94   2:30

 Before I tell you about tonight's yellow train adventure, I want to talk
 about The Yellow Train in Literature and Philosophy.  Many people think
 that I was the first person to ever write about yellow trains - it isn't
 true, and I want to take this moment to pay tribute to the authors who
 inspired me.

 The yellow train, surprisingly enough, makes its first literary appearance
 in The Bible - The Book of Revelation 20:15 reads "And whosoever was not
 found written in the book of life was cast before the yellow train."
 Now if you go and look this up in your Bible, you may discover that instead
 of "cast before the yellow train" yours will read "cast into the lake of
 fire;" this is due to a small mistranslation from the original Greek text.

 The yellow train was not confined to Western literature; a famous Zen koan
 reads as follows:

        A monk asked Joshu, a Chinese Zen master: "Has a yellow train
        Buddha-nature or not?"

        Joshu answered "Mu."

 While many were enlightened while considering these words, there was the
 unfortunate side-effect of a number of monks feeling odd desires to become
 subway conductors.  Since no one in 13th Century Japan knew what to make
 of this, the words "yellow train" were changed to "dog" in all but the
 earliest copies of the text.

 It is a little known fact that Descartes' often-quoted statement of being was
 "I think, therefore I am a yellow train."  In the original manuscript, the
 last three words extended into the margin, where they were lost by a careless
 proofreader when the document was transcribed.  I leave you to consider the
 implications on modern philosophy.

 More recently, Lewis Carroll was asked to update his poem "Jabberwocky"
 to celebrate the opening of the London Underground.  In 1893, he wrote:

           Twas midnight, and the yellow trains
           did gyre and gimble 'neath the wabe

 He never published this version because someone pointed out that the
 Underground closes at night, and he didn't want to be called a liar by
 infuriated commuters.

 In the world of politics, John F. Kennedy said "Ask not what your yellow
 train can do for you; ask what you can do for your yellow train."  At
 least, he meant to say that, but some boisterous MIT students hacked the
 teleprompter, and changed "yellow train" to "country" just to make
 Kennedy look silly, and prove that without prepared speeches, he would
 have been at a total loss for words in most situations.

 So tonight I was back up at 72nd St., wondering if my luck in avoiding
 yellow trains would continue.  It was not to be - about 5 minutes after I
 got to the platform, I could hear the unmistakable growl of a yellow
 train approaching.  It kept up for about 10 minutes, slowly increasing in
 volume.  You usually don't see this much foreshadowing in the world of
 yellow trains - they go for stealth most of the time.  Finally, I could
 see the one bright light in the tunnel, and there it was.

 Hi Janet! It's been a while...I would have sent you a postcard, but I
 couldn't find one with a yellow train on it.

 This yellow train wasn't built for stealth.  This yellow train couldn't
 have sneaked up on Helen Keller.  It was so big it had THREE diesel
 engines - one at the front, and two at the back.  Separating the two at
 the back was a completely painted over passenger car, clearly labeled
 TRANSITION CAR in black letters.  I don't know what a transition car is
 (it probably had Richard Nixon hiding in it), but it pleased me to see
 that the things on yellow trains are so weird that the TRANSIT AUTHORITY
 would forget what some of the stuff is if it weren't labeled.

 In between were three cars with weird conveyor belt things, one with a
 bulldozer (and the damn bulldozer gets bigger every time I see it, and
 STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY DO WITH IT IN THE SUBWAY), and two with
enough
 wood to build a medium-sized house, along with a few strategically placed
 barrels of toxic waste.  And a compressor.  They were kind enough to
 label it, though I don't know what they intended to compress in it.
 Probably me, if I got too close.

 The amazing thing is five minutes later, the express showed up, and we
 zipped along pretty quickly down the local track, AND WE NEVER PASSED THE
 BIG YELLOW TRAIN.  If you saw this yellow train, you'd know that it
 couldn't move at more than 5 miles per hour, without the aid of a nuclear
 power plant, or a small warp drive (and it didn't have one, or I would
 have seen it).  So it didn't just stay in front of us. WHERE DID IT GO?  It
 was at least 100 feet long, so I couldn't have just missed it in the dark.
 And there aren't exactly a lot of turnoffs or detours it could have taken.

 Who would have thought that the first cloaking device was developed by
 the NYCTA?

- - - - -
.