Happy Birthday Dingy

My little brother had a birthday yesterday. His name is Mark Edward, but we always called him Dingy. Dingy was crazy about trains as a little kid. He would get so excited when we pulled up to the railroad tracks and the guard rail came down with the bell ringing furiously - ding - ding - ding - ding. So we called him Dingy. Trains figured very prominently in my childhood. We always had elaborate train sets. There was a train yard on Staten Island where Dingy and I were born after our parents came home from service in German after WWII. After attending services at the First Baptist Church we would stop at the train yard where my father had put Tootsie Rolls in the parked box cars. We would climb into the cars and find the candy. We spent our summers in my mom's home town of Sandersville, Georgia. We would pile into the car and drive to the nearby town of Tennille to watch the Nancy Hanks locomotive pull in with the seemingly endless line of cars behind her. That was a real big deal. I don't see Dingy very often these days. We were together at Mia's wedding, but prior to that it had been years. Life does throw us some twists and curves. Dingy is a real estate broker in Boston, where he graduated from BU and decided to live. He is the father of Emma and Charlotte and the husband of Melinda. I love you, Dingy.