Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

102. agreeable. Delightful also were the colors of the nondescript weeds and grasses growing about the railroad, varying from cool blue greens and grayish violet greens, to warm olive and brown greens with sharp dashes of the vivid yellow green of new grass growing out of only ditch water; soft pinkish lavender topped some of the clumps; I noted how blackish the shadows were, without yellow reflections as one sees in June.

     I stood here for over an hour. Once a small boy on a bicycle came and stopped to lean over the parapet. At the moment a string of cars were being pushed along, some of them long ones, twice the ordinary freight-car length. To draw the boy out, I said "Those are long ones, aren't they?" - To which he replied Um-huh" with enthusiasm. Then he told me he had been to Gardenville to his uncle's to het a hair-cut; that his father worked on the New York Central, and that one day he had seen an amusingly long string of cars going by, and counting them, learned there were 36. He kept going from on side of the bridge to the other, and once as I turned when he came up, he gave me a warm friendly smile which seemed to me to indicate that he thought I was O.K. because I too was interested in trains.

     Evening - Total Eclipse of the moon - the air sparkling clear and ideal for it - to me the most beautiful moment was when just a sliver of the moon was still clear - a brilliant silver white, flanked by a rich orange which shaded to smoky orange-brown on the opposite side. It was like a clear glass ball, full of clear amber liquid with a light shining from within. [i]