The Royce Files

I am finally coming out of the deep freeze which the blog has been in since December. It seems like it has been coldest winter I recollect. To warm up 2014 I'll be posting a bit about my model railroad. It made a major acquisition this weekend with the assembly of a train table. Now I need to start to lay track and clean up the floor layout upstairs. For now I will feature one of the 'road's' special trains. Once there was an fine train that could take you from L.A. to Chicago. It was BNSF predecessor Santa Fe's Super Chief . The funny thing is that I learned a lot about the Super Chief by listening to Jack Benny. He would have a train episode nearly every season. Here one from his TV shows. Simply hilarious.       The Lionel 212 Alco FAA pair belong to my father. He recollected to have acquired the diesels and the 3 passenger cars in the early 1960s. I have childhood memories of my dad running the train around the house...

Shopping will continue to be a part of this festive time of year until....well until money and stores and desires cease to be. So not tomorrow or the next day. Christmas shopping can be a stressful holiday tradition because literally everybody does it. And this year there was more of it because of the early US Thanksgiving. I have tried to do most of my shopping online but I do run out of time and end up at the stores on Christmas Eve poring over merchandise, speculating what will be the best gift. I suspect the the Magi who visited the infant Jesus did not have the same dilemmas we do with Christmas shopping. There must have been an unwritten custom on how to give gifts to someone important. Gold and myrhh and francescence are not traditional given in these times. Ipods, Ipads, and Kindles seem to be all the rage. What would I get someone important? I would put much thought into it and look at potential items online and at store...

I find myself in St. Cloud this morning. I decided not to take a long jaunt home after I got an extremely late start (8:45 PM). I stayed at a Travelodge in St. Cloud . It was small but quaint. It had a flat panel TV and wireless internet plus a little breakfast. Overall, it was a good stay and Priceline certainly helped me get a bargain. William Shatner you are the best! As a special Christmas treat I've got a link to a Jack Benny Christmas radio show which you can download or listen to online. The Jack Benny programs are gems of the Golden Age of Radio and the Christmas programs are especially memorable. For a number of years they kept doing a Christmas shopping routine where Jack (who has a reputation for being cheap and miserly) would buy a gift for his annoucer Phil only to constantly need to change something about it thereby driving the clerk mad. In this program Jack is Christmas shopping for shoelaces for Phil.