For the last several summers now your home-away-from-home (and probably the only reason Mom hasn’t killed you and your brothers yet) has been the recreation center at Irving Elementary School on 102^nd and Grant Streets. You go every weekday to play lazy games of baseball on dusty sun-baked diamonds. You play kickball or four squares on griddle-hot asphalt. You stitch lanyards and bracelets out of colorful gimp. And you torment girls.

You simply can’t imagine summer without it.

As you know there are only two ways to get to the place. There’s the Long way, which is the parent-approved route: South on 97^th to Becher, Right on Becher to 99^th, Left on 99^th to Lincoln, Right on Lincoln to…Oh, what difference does it make? You never take the parent-approved route anyway, do you? The other way is the adventurous short cut you’ve always known as The Gully Way.

Now, I’m not sure the Gully even qualifies as a gully. It’s probably more of a ravine, or a gorge, or maybe it’s just a big old ditch. And at this point in your life it has always seemed like the place where civilization ended and the wild frontier began. The entry point is where Becher Street peters out just west of 99^th Street. Then it is down the steep and filthy embankment to the bottom. From there it is a couple hundred yards of nothing until you reach the other side, climb up, and begin the final stage of the journey through a densely wooded area that may or may not be part of something called Biwer’s or “Beaver’s” Woods.

These early years of the 1960s mark the centennial of the American Civil War, so your unhinged friend Michael M. (the Civil War obsessed son of a Civil War obsessed father) usually turns the trek through the Gully Way into a battle re-enactment of one type or another. You race through the woods using sticks, as rifles while your friend bellows gibberish like, “Avenge Bull Run!” “Richmond or bust!” and “Peach Blossoms over Shiloh!” The kid is certifiable…but sort of fun.

The Gully Way, however, will soon be a thing of your past, as it has been for me these many, many years. One day soon the giant earthmovers, dump trucks and road graders will arrive, and the place will officially be off-limits. And the transformation from personal playground to the 894 by-pass or—Zoo Freeway—will begin.

When you were younger you just took the Gully Way for granted, assuming it to be a natural feature of the landscape. But you’re older now, and you’ve come to suspect that it wasn’t always simply a “gully.” So the other day you asked Mom about it, and learned that once it had been a right-of-way for the Milwaukee Rapid Transit and Speedrail Company, a light interurban rail system that discontinued service just a few months before your first birthday. With the coming of the freeways it was probably only a matter of time but on September 2, 1950, when two Speedrail trains collided head on killing 10 passengers and injuring 45 more, the era of light rail in Milwaukee was clearly doomed.

Many years from now Milwaukee, like a lot of other cities of similar size, will debate whether or not to bring light rail back to ease the congestion and lessen the pollution caused by so many automobiles. But it will probably never happen. The cost will simply be too steep. Some cities will manage to pull it off. But it probably won’t happen in Milwaukee for the rest of your life…if ever. And that will always trouble you, not only because you’ve come to love trains so much, but also because Milwaukee once had one of the most diverse and efficient transportation systems in the entire country. And she let it slip away.

The only thing any of us can be certain about in life is that we can never really be certain about anything. Change is the only constant. But we can remember. And this is what you will do. You will remember, and in that way keep alive at least some of the things time will have taken away. And one day you’ll remember Speedrail, a train you never saw…except in your imagination…thundering rapidly through the Gully Way.

Speedrail (Homeward Bound)   1993   John T. McCarthy, Jr.   8-color silkscreen