Here’s a 1888 B&M rail map:

http://www.davidrumsey.com/maps900044-24538.html


On Apr 8, 2015, at 3:33 PM, Scott Holmes <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Well Carl, I think your bit of insight provides a very significant
> perspective on the culture and society at that time.  I don't have a map
> of the B&M railway lines in 1884 but I suspect you are correct.  I would
> expect that Urban Geographers would find much to consider here on
> questions of the development of suburbs and the onset of workers as
> commuters.  I live in Los Angeles where there are very few trains for
> commuting.  There is actually only one that goes through the San
> Fernando Valley.  Many years ago, just before I acquired consciousness,
> there was the Red Line which stretched all the way to Long Beach.  You
> can see an amusing take on what happened to it in the Roger Rabbit
> movie.
> 
> Anyway, this is just one example of why it is a good idea to study Mark
> Twain. 
> 
> On Wed, 2015-04-08 at 14:46 -0400, Carl J. Chimi wrote:
>> Gee, I saw it as perhaps the ONE thing on this list I could speak of with a
>> tiny little bit of "authority".
>> 
>> This may seem unbelievable to most people, especially in today's day and age
>> when children are so sheltered and driven everywhere.  When I was three, my
>> cousin (who was six and knew everything) and I went to the B&M station at
>> Summertime Lodge on Summer Street in Malden.  We waited for a Buddliner
>> train to stop and climbed up the ladder on its back end.  Then we lay down
>> on top of the train and watched the world go by.  The train stopped a number
>> of times, briefly, but ended up in Lowell, where we climbed down and waited
>> for another train to go back to Malden.  I had no idea where I was the whole
>> time, and probably my cousin didn't, either.  I only realized we had gone to
>> Lowell more than 20 years later when my band went there to play a gig and I
>> recognized the place I had been as a small child, as if from a dream.  We
>> actually made that trip two or three times.  Our mothers, who had other
>> children to worry about, never had the slightest idea.
>> 
>> That world of almost 60 years ago is gone forever, and probably it's a good
>> thing.  But it's a nice boyhood memory to have, and it did give me a bit of
>> knowledge of the trains in the Boston area.
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Mark Twain Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott Holmes
>> Sent: Wednesday, April 8, 2015 2:25 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Twain, November 11, 1884 A letter to Pond
>> 
>> See what happens when someone who has never been to a place starts blabbing
>> about the place.  Every so often I need to be reminded of the Geographer's
>> dictum that the map is not the territory.
>> 
>> On Wed, 2015-04-08 at 14:13 -0400, Carl J. Chimi wrote:
>>> Why do you say that?  I grew up in Malden, which is just south of 
>>> Melrose and maybe five miles or so north of Boston.  Lowell is maybe 
>>> 25 miles north of Boston.  It would have been relatively easy for 
>>> Twain to have spent the night after the Melrose gig to take a train 
>>> into Boston for a good hotel, and have penned and posted the letter from
>> there.
>>> 
>>> The point is that none of these places were more than an hour or so 
>>> away from each other by the B&M railroad, which I'm pretty sure 
>>> existed in those days and catered to people who worked in Boston but 
>>> commuted from cities and towns the trains had by then begun to turn 
>>> into suburbs.  When I was young, the B&M ran from North Station in 
>>> Boston north through Malden and Melrose and on to Lowell, among other 
>>> destinations.  I think that was true in the 1880s.  The train run from 
>>> Melrose to Boston might have taken a half hour or so, and from Boston to
>> Lowell maybe twice that.
>>> 
>>> Carl
>>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Mark Twain Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott 
>>> Holmes
>>> Sent: Wednesday, April 8, 2015 1:56 PM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Twain, November 11, 1884 A letter to Pond
>>> 
>>> On this date Twain and Cable were in Lowell, MA for a show at 
>>> Huntington Hall.  The day before they were in Melrose, MA, but there 
>>> is a letter from Twain to Pond dated November 11, 1884 from Boston, 
>>> MA.  Given their geographic locations, it doesn't make much sense to 
>>> me for Sam Clemens to be in Boston on that date to post a letter.  This is
>> listed in MTP

Fred Harwood
Linwood Cottage
Sheffield