How My Brother Saved Me from a Careening Train
Grit, Grace, and DNA, Part 6
The year: 1972
The place: Ballard, Washington
Subject: Kenneth Stacy Merwin (1957—)
My brother Ken and I spent our childhood ricocheting through a familial pinball machine: Mom and Dad, then just Mom. Then Gramma and Grampa. Then Dad and Arlene. Then just Dad.
By middle school we landed where we should have stayed all along—with Gramma and Grampa.
Wherever we landed, we bent ourselves to fit and made the best of the ground beneath us.
Somehow this turned me into a sensitive stick figure and Ken into a hero. Both of us, resilient adults.
Ken and I had plenty of unsupervised leeway growing up. I could tell you a hundred stories on the Escapades of Ken and Kyla, but I chose this one for you:
Ken is fourteen. I’m thirteen. It’s summer in Ballard, and we’re living with our single dad.
Ken – with brown doe eyes and the slender, agile build of a Greyhound – is good by nature, steady.
Any misgivings he tucks quietly inside. He has a big curiosity, easy smile, and the willingness to try anything.
We are on our own, typical of a summer day, and have sallied forth with the unassailable confidence that lives in the realm of children—and only children.
Armed with hotdogs wrapped in paper napkins inside a Wonder Bread bag, plus our bikes and our mutual distain for boredom, Ken and I decide to poke around the hills above Shilshole Bay of Puget Sound.
We end up walking the railroad tracks carved into the hillside—straight up on one side, straight down on the other. Below us: sailboats bobbing in the marina and Puget Sound rippling into the distance.
We hop from tie to tie, balancing on the rails, arms out, sun on our faces. We sing the theme songs from Gilligan’s Island and Daniel Boone.
This, we decide, is such a good idea.
Then we hear it. A train whistle. The rumble of steel.
The tracks curve, so we can’t see the train in either direction. We lock eyes. With great confidence and zero evidence, I announce that the train is coming on the outside track—the downhill side.
So we jump into a narrow ditch along the inside track to wait it out.
Sure as hell, the train explodes around the corner on the inside rail.
Ken slams me against the mountainside and wedges himself between me and the careening train.
The cars roar past – maybe four feet away – blasting us with wind, dust, and twigs like a psychotic tornado. The train seems a mile long.
Finally it disappears around the bend.
We stand there blinking.
No harm done.
Our bag of hot dogs, however, did not survive. Most of it lays smashed flat as a popsicle stick on the railroad track, with two sections hanging over the rail like saddlebags.
I’m still wheezing when I notice the grin spreading across Ken’s face. I smile back.
What else could we do?
We tuck our hearts back into our chests, scramble down the embankment, ride our bikes home, and call it a day.
We never spoke of it again. And we definitely didn’t tell our dad.
My own vein of guts showed up later in life—a single woman with that same stubborn disdain for boredom, a golden retriever named Pippin and much later another golden named Snickerdoodle.
I’ve wandered deserts, climbed mountains, and chased sunsets across continents. I can build a fence, chop wood, tear an RV down to its studs, raise a puppy into a good dog, and sew anything from lingerie to suede jackets.
I tell you this in humility, because I’ve also done my fair share of foolish things. And spent a lot of life alone.
Still, when I think about where my guts come from, I look back to my spirited ancestors—and to my brother.
The boy who stood between me and a train.
# # #
This is Part 6 of a new seven-part series, Grit, Grace, and DNA—an excavation of legacy: The brilliance, the burden, and the quiet ways we learn to live butter side up.
The saga continues next week with the final segment, Part 7, “I Inherited a Sensitive Heart: How I Bounce through Adversity”
Side note: I would love it if you would follow me on Substack. All my content is free, and you don’t have to jump through a bunch up hoops to find me. Thank you! ❤️
Read Part 1, “I Inherited Courage: How Lon and Cecilia Threw Themselves from a Moving Train.”
Read Part 2, “I Inherited Gumption: How Pearly Jack Merwin Walked North into Canada and Disappeared.”
Read Part 3, “I Inherited Tenacity: How Aunt Toots Fended Off the Oil Men.”
Read Part 4, “I Inherited Imagination: How Gramma Built a Woodland Retreat from a Firecracker Shack.”
Read Part 5, “I Inherited Moxie: How Dad Smoked His Last Cigarette While Driving to the Emergency Room.”
Kyla Merwin 