One, Two, Three Cheers, Tommy!

When my son Thomas was little he used to love trains.  For his first birthday, I served a Thomas the Tank Engine birthday cake.  He played with the Thomas the Tank Engine set continuously.  He would spend hours setting up the track in different configurations, complete with a roundhouse for the cars.  He knew all of the car's names:  Thomas, Percy, James, Skarloey, Donald, Douglas, Sir Handel, Clarabel, etc.  He would read one particular Thomas the Tank Engine storybook everyday and recite lines from it, including:  "One, two, three cheers, Tommy!" a point in the story where Thomas saves the day by getting the Christmas tree.  That page of the book is ripped because he turned it one time too many.  My son also watched the Thomas the Tank Engine videos with his big brown eyes glued to the television set.  He couldn't get enough of them.  I remember my sister Laurie inviting us to Puddicombe Farms in Stoney Creek so Thomas could go for a ride on a giant Thomas the Tank Engine train.  Thomas loved the ride, but was so disappointed when he had to get off that he cried.  When Thomas was little, he lived, ate and breathed Thomas the Tank Engine:  in fact, he even thought he was named after the toy train.  Now the train sits in a blue Rubbermaid container in our furnace room, longing for another little boy to say the words "One, two, three cheers, Tommy!"  Those were the days!