Sebastian Hogness

In our old house, I remember that the attic was one of my favorite places to be. It wasn’t exactly cluttered, unlike some other attics, for it was quite empty, with only two substantial boxes in plain sight. The attic looked- and smelled- a little dusty, but it wasn’t exactly a hayloft in summer, so I was fine with that. Still, I wouldn’t have thought much of our attic if there hadn’t been those two large boxes in the middle. Once I discovered that they were full of wooden toy trains and thousands of simple tracks, the attic became a happy place, like a cookie jar with 200 times the area. And in this place I built the largest, most complicated toy train track in my life.

It started with just a small track leading to a makeshift train station, but then it expanded. Soon I was adding in tunnels and building fantastic bridges! There were tracks running over and under, under and over, with even little ramps for toys to run up or slide down. When my wooden superhighway was complete, the fabulous thing spanned yards and looked like a miniature metropolis. After hours of building, I showed my mom. She was impressed, to sum it up.

Colin Waichler

Drywall dust floats through the air, stinging the eyes and nose. I am grateful for my cold; the congestion keeps the dust from giving me a headache. But congestion in your nose can not keep out noise. The sounds of drilling, pounding, shouting, and hammering fill the air with an obnoxious cacophony of noises. Massive heaters filled the larger spaces. They dried the drywall mud and made the air heat up to at least 90 degrees, by far enough to make me want to hurl myself into a snowbank if there were any around. The heat was so intense that the pine tongue-and-groove planking composing our ceiling shrunk, leaving small gaps between the boards. At night the metal roof groans and complains as it slowly cools and shrinks. Small particles of unknown origin sift through the air, stinging your mouth of you dare to open it. Tiny wood chips left over from the construction of the frame crunch underfoot as I head for the nearest exit to get a breath of fresh air.

1/24/2012