One year my father made my young dreams come true. He worked about 10 hours at the delicatessen in downtown Boston. Then he walked across the street to Erich Fuch’s Hobby Shop and bought me a Lionel train set. There was a black locomotive, a coal car, a reddish-brown freight car, a gray oil tanker car, and a red caboose. Then there were enough tracks to form a fair-sized oval. There was even a silver trestle bridge, some small green plastic-bristled pine trees, and a little station house with that little guy who did not have much of a social life and only got out when the train came by.