Time Between Trains: Stories

( 3 )

Overview

Welcome to Superior, Wisconsin, the westernmost port on the Great Lakes, home to a declining population, often-dismal weather, and dying ethnic communities. Despite the biting winter winds and the ore dust blanketing the city, miracles occur here. In the title story, the only Jewish track inspector for the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe system discovers a magical place behind the drab house of a lonely Polish schoolteacher; in "Closing Time," an accordion player working the bar of the local VFW finds an ...
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More About This Book

Overview

Welcome to Superior, Wisconsin, the westernmost port on the Great Lakes, home to a declining population, often-dismal weather, and dying ethnic communities. Despite the biting winter winds and the ore dust blanketing the city, miracles occur here. In the title story, the only Jewish track inspector for the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe system discovers a magical place behind the drab house of a lonely Polish schoolteacher; in "Closing Time," an accordion player working the bar of the local VFW finds an appreciative audience in a disillusioned German war bride; in "The Moon of the Grass Fires," a retired flour mill worker has a vision of ultimate goodness and the meaning of his life one beautiful autumn evening as, covered with wheat dust, he takes a walk near the East End's abandoned ore docks.
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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
In his fourth collection, Bukoski (Polonaise; Children of Strangers) brings to life once again the working-class town of Superior, Wis., telling linked tales of its Polish inhabitants in 13 poignant, well-crafted stories. In the title story, a lonely Jewish track inspector and a widowed teacher observe each other from a distance, until the teacher's garden, with its profusion of butterflies and flowers, brings them momentarily together. Polka accordionist Buck Mrozek admits, "[M]y VFW night is the high point of the month," and he plays his heart out to a pretty German woman saddled with a boorish husband in "Closing Time." In these stories and others, thoughtful, stoical characters are briefly connected in moments more lovely for their fleetingness. Older protagonists-faithful, conservative, family oriented-dominate the collection. One noteworthy exception is Thaddeus Milszewski, a Marine cook who appears in several stories. He loves, and then reluctantly abandons, his half-French, half-Vietnamese lover in "The Bird That Sings in the Bamboo"; in "A Geography of Snow," his young cousin watches "crazy Tad" as he drunkenly kisses a map of their neighborhood, proclaiming the map will go back with him to Vietnam, "so a medic can get it for me while I'm dying. In the newspapers, you'll read about the casualty of a hometown boy." Bukoski proves himself a keen, sympathetic observer of his characters' travails and foibles, and these atmospheric tales are a moving testament to a wintry region and its hardy inhabitants. (Aug.) Forecast: If Southern Methodist is able to target Polish communities and local Wisconsin bookstores, this engaging collection could make a respectable showing. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Moving through the same territory as Polonaise (1999), Bukoski's fourth collection sets 13 stories in the Polish and Slavic neighborhoods of Superior, Wisconsin. The author mines a rich vein of American society that has received much less literary attention than it deserves, walking us through the old blue-collar neighborhoods where the VFW halls are named after Thaddeus Kosciuszko (Polish hero of the American Revolution, in case you didn't know) and polkas far outnumber Sinatra on any jukebox in town. Stolid, hardworking, conservative, and somewhat clannish, the Catholic Slavs of Bukoski's stories are even more unpretentious than the Lutheran Swedes of Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegone-although they can raise a lot more hell at a party. The outsiders in their midst, like Joe Rubin, the Jewish railway track inspector of the title story, tend to be more solitary than most, but people here are rather lonely in general and observe the world around them with a mixture of cynicism and resignation. The parish priest who narrates "Winter Weeds," for example, has to endure the private torment of learning in the confessional that a woman he is secretly obsessed with has taken a lover, while the Marine corporal of "A Geography of Snow" seems to take pleasure in bragging while drunk that he is nothing more than a company cook who got his Purple Heart as the result of a truck accident. The author succeeds in portraying the overwhelming smallness of this world and its dependence upon familiar routines: the parish church that provides an entire social life for the old lady in "Holy Walker," or the accordion gigs that bring some variety (as well as an occasional fling) into the settled life of millworker Buck Mrozek in "Closing Time." Ranging from the 1940s to the present day, Bukoski's tales also serve as a record of a slowly fading world. At once sad and fascinating: fine sketches of an interesting subject.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780870744792
  • Publisher: Southern Methodist University Press
  • Publication date: 7/11/2003
  • Edition description: First Edition
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 188
  • Product dimensions: 6.32 (w) x 9.33 (h) x 0.84 (d)

Table of Contents

A Geography of Snow 1
Time Between Trains 19
Holy Walker 31
Winter Weeds 45
Closing Time 61
Leaves That Shimmer in the Slightest Breeze 79
The Moon of the Grass Fires 93
It Had To Be You 107
A Philosophy of Dust 119
The Value of Numbers 143
Leokadia and Fireflies 149
The Bird That Sings in the Bamboo 163
President of the Past 181
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Customer Reviews

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Sort by: Showing all of 2 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted June 11, 2006

    Haunting Stories

    Time Between Trains is a touching assembly of stories set in the small city of Superior, WI. The characters live out-of-the-way lives that paradoxically reach deeply into American and European history. A wonderful collection.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 3, 2009

    No text was provided for this review.

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