From time to time I have had somebody ask me, "How does a man like you get to be a man like you?" Usually, such questions are greeted with my best Clint Eastwood. That generally saves any need for useless chatter. I turn my back and go back to my life. Sometimes they will persist. And I take it to Defcon 2. Generally that does the trick. The wind blows their remains out of their shoes and life goes on.

But now I'm working on my edge. People around here think I need to be more user friendly. Kinder. Gentler. So I figured, instead of incinerating the next hapless victim, I would simply refer them to Volume 240 and be done with it. So here goes.

Steel. Cool to the touch like the skin of a shark. I remember the first time I really came in contact with the reality of something built of steel. I was ten years old and weighed 91 lbs. The diesel locomotive I was standing next to was two years old and weighed 344 tons.

I remember not being able to understand why the ground under my feet seemed to tremble. That's what made me brave enough to reach out and touch the gleaming maroon, gray and gold skin of the beast before me. I had to know the source of such overwhelming power. To connect with it. To allow it to course through my body as it did through the twin steel ribbons upon which it lay in waiting. Not quite at rest. Not quite ready to ease into motion. Once I made contact, all was right with the world. I had touched the thundering heart of God, the Almighty. I was one with the source.

My fingers still recall the moist coolness of the trembling alloy. Cool not cold. Moist not wet. Slick to the touch but certain in its immobility. A building on gleaming wheels, whose flanges smelled of cordite brake shoes and grease as black as pitch. Wheels that held a weight that I believed impossible to move. Yet able to be slipped into the darkness ahead by just the slightest effort of the hand, now resting gently on the throttle high above my thunderstruck brain. One gloved hand, empowered to move a mountain of steel, up and over the mighty Alleghany Mountain range to places I could only identify by the distant echo of the voice calling the faithful to their "magic carpets made of steel."

At that single moment in time, I knew what fate had in store. I would discover the way to enter the brain of the beast. I would climb the 34 feet up the side, and slip through the distant doorway into the cab. I would know the master of the monster that stood chanting under my vibrating palm; know his secrets; know his wisdom; know the amazing feeling to have such power in the palm of my little hand. Every boys dream was now my reason for drawing each breath. An impossible dream for a mere boy of ten. But a dream I was determined to make a reality within the next two years of my life.

Railroads are a place of unforgettable smells and unimaginable sounds. The sweet smell of diesel exhaust blown high into a darkened sky. The mournful, yet melodic notes of the four chimed Air horns that signal eminent departure for destinations with unspellable names. Tunkhannock, Salamanca, Oswego. Indecipherable names, echo-laden and slurred by station masters whose repetition has made the more atmospheric then informative long, long ago. The smell of a million creosote soaked ties and the smoldering journal boxes of a hundred boxcars on the move. The staccato sound of the locomotive bell, issuing warning that the time has come to go. All of these memories remain in my memory as though the men and machines that made these sights, sounds and smells were still somehow present, though their flags had fallen long ago.

That first encounter with steel set me on the path of learning from whence it came.

When other boys were playing with toy trains, I set about learning where to find the men who could bring my dreams to life. I knew that my father had a boss, so these railroad men must have bosses. I sought them out over the years and by the age of 13 I had made the Erie Lackawanna Railroad my first advertising account. I knew that railroad police and their vicious dogs lived to chase kids like me off the property. I knew railroads were one of the most dangerous places on Earth. So I used all of my artistic and creative skills to create a series of Safety Posters for the boss of Erie Lackawanna locomotive engineers.

And every day after school I would go over to the Erie-Lackawanna Station in downtown Newark , NJ and wait for the westbound "Phoebe Snow" ( yes the singer's dad was a E-L Engineer) to pull into the station enroute to Chicago. Every day I would deliver another safety poster up to the engineer in a mailing tube with William MacDonnell, Road Forman of Engines, Erie-Lackawanna Railroad Roundhouse, Hoboken New Jersey neatly lettered to impress. Inside the tube were posters that read "Use Your Brain Around A Train", "Use your Head. Don't Wind Up Dead." "Look Both Ways. Safety Pays." Each poster featured a cartoon of a hapless railroad worker doing something deadly stupid, just before his moment of truth caught up with him.

Sure enough after two weeks of this Engineer-delivered Safety Campaign, I came face to face with Mr. MacDonnell himself, at the throttle of locomotive 807 on the Eastbound Phoebe Snow. "So you're the young artist. Climb up here young man. Let me get a look at you." he yelled down over is 12,000 hp ground shaker. Just as I had planned two years prior, I pulled myself up into the noisy locomotive cab and shook his hand. "Want to ride over to Hoboken with us and see your work at work?" he asked. I had done everything it took to turn my dream into a reality.

Did I ever get to actually run a locomotive? Well that's a story for another day. But now you know how a guy like me got to be a guy like me. If I could do that at the age of 12, imagine what I could do with the rest of my life.