KAPAI'S CORNER: Boyhood train passion never runs out of steam

THERE'S nothing like the sound of a steam train to take you back to your  childhood days.
The golden olden days when we would lie in bed listening to them puff and pant as they pulled their huge loads past our house and down the final Hull Rd straight - before unloading at the Tauranga wharf.
I clearly remember crisp winter nights with faces pressed against cold glass windows, watching these black beauties belch cotton-wool clouds.
Big bursts of coal-fired steam that would shoot sky high and then disappear soon after, like the steam trains themselves.
To a young fulla growing up across from train tracks at the Mount, these big black engines snorting and hissing and spitting out sparks outside my house looked like giant creeping caterpillars covered in black tar.
But that was just at night. During the day they were way cool and I always wanted to go for a ride on one - And still do.
Those memories flooded back yesterday when the sound of a steam train huffing and puffing, hooting and tooting filled the air as it pulled up down on Station Rd in Te Puna.
This once-in-a-lifetime experience was part of the Kiwi Fruit festival week and I wanted to race down there and climb aboard with all those other lucky buggers who would be crossing the Wairoa River and training into town just as they did in the old days.
Steam trains were the jumbo jets of our generation.
 They painted pictures of far-away places, romantic rendezvous and exciting encounters.
In fact back in the day before broadband and Bebo and tiresome texting, many a marriage was consummated on board a steam train.
Back then in Wisconsin it was illegal to kiss on a steam train and in Seattle women who sat on men's laps without placing a pillow between them would face an automatic six-month jail term.
And, believe it or not, anyone caught putting salt on the train tracks in Alabama  at one time could be sentenced to death.
If that law had applied in Tauranga we would have been hung out to dry many times over for playing silly buggers and being blown away by how a nail could be  flattened when placed on the  tracks.
Steam trains played a big part on the big screen for us kids when we watched cowboys and itchy-bums chase each other across the huge picture screen at the Mount movies  on a Saturday afternoon.
All the way home from the "pitchers" we would relive our big-screen moments and act out our heroes as they chased the Iron Horse full of gun-toting cowboys.
Even back then, all the Maori kids wanted to be Indians riding bareback with bow and arrows.
And our Caucasian cousins always wanted to be the cowboys chasing us. By the time we reached the Blake Park sand dune hills we would have already chosen sides to be either cowboys or itchy-bums.
Then we would run hell for leather alongside the Hull Rd train tracks, chasing our shadows and anyone else who got in the way.
And for my two bobs' worth of  Westerns, we had sound-effects equal to any Weta workshop.
The Blake Park hills were alive with the sounds of "peow peow" imaginary gunfire,  injuns scalping on the warpath and the whacking of our backsides with willow sticks to give us that extra ounce of juice.
It really was Hollywood up and down the train tracks of Hull Rd as if the Iron Horse itself was right there with us, shooting back at us from its guard-van windows.
Those long, lazy Saturday afternoons moseying on home from the pitchers were magic, and when we finally rolled into Dodge City (aka the Central Parade shops) and watered our horses with a three-penny ice cream, we were plum tuckered out and ready for our favourite Saturday night TV show, which also involved steam trains.
Petticoat Junction was set in the Midwest of America somewhere in the Ozark Mountains.
Our favourite characters who lived at The Shady Rest Motel were Uncle Jo, Bea the boss and her three curvaceous daughters, Bobbi Jo, Betty Jo and Billy Jo.
And I can still hear the banjo-plucking whistle-hooting theme song in my head almost half a century later.
I heard it clearly again yesterday down on the train tracks of Te Puna as JAI 275 pulled her passengers into town.
What a great call by Graeme Crossman and his Kiwifruit Festival team to bring back the black beauty.
Let's hope we all get a chance to ride it for real, just as they did in the good old days.
All aboard!
tommykapai@gmail.com