I used to spend several months each year volunteering at the Oregon Zoo in Portland. Anyone who has visited the zoo will remember how you gradually work your way downhill as you view the different exhibits. A butterfly exhibit was set up in a tent at the lowest spot in the animal exhibits area.
The zoo used to have $2 admission on the second Tuesday of each month (now it’s $4). Those Two Dollar Tuesdays were extremely popular, with thousands of people visiting the zoo, and it was a common practice for senior-citizen care facilities to bring groups that day.
One Two Dollar Tuesday in August was an unusually hot, bright day. I was working down near the butterflies. A group from one of those care facilities came toward me. Some were being pushed in wheelchairs; others got help walking from members of their facility staff. I knew that these people would have a difficult time making it back up the long uphill way to the entrance gate, so I called for two extended-length golf carts called “Zoomers” to provide a ride back.
The Zoomers quickly arrived, and most of this group, including the ones in wheelchairs, were helped to climb aboard. But there was one man who remained in his wheelchair. I learned that he had advanced Alzheimer’s and was not able to make any sort of movement, so he would have to be pushed up the long uphill walkway to the gate. He was a pretty big man, so I knew it would take someone with strength.
He was being pushed by his wife, a very small lady. It was easy to see that she did not have the strength and ability to push him such a long way uphill. All of the staff people with the group went on the Zoomers, so there was no one to push him except for her. So I offered.
She insisted that she could do it. I told her that it was almost a quarter-mile to the gate and uphill all the way. Soon she agreed to let me help her, but insisted that we take turns. I agreed to that, and we started out with me pushing.
About two-thirds of the way up to the gate was the zoo train station. The large number of people wanting to ride on Two Dollar Tuesdays meant that the zoo would have to be operating all three of its trains, including the one pulled by steam engine.
Just as we were passing by, the steam-engine train arrived at the station. While passengers were getting off and on, the engineer climbed up onto the tender to take on water from a small water tower. Knowing that the man in the wheelchair was probably old enough to have seen steam engines when he was a kid, I paused to let him watch.
Soon the train was ready to leave the station, and as it started to move, the man suddenly started laughing. He continued to laugh and chuckle until the train disappeared out of his sight.
His wife was staring at him, and in a quiet, awe-filled voice, she said, “That’s the first sound he’s made in five months.”
During the rest of our hike up to the gate, the man occasionally sort of chuckled a few times. Obviously, something about watching that steam engine start moving caused some sort of reaction in him. Did he remember seeing steam engines many years ago, when he was much younger?
Now, years later, I often remember that incident. It’s probably the most enjoyable memory I have of the hundreds of hours I volunteered at the Zoo. I have a special title for the way seeing that steam engine starting to move caused that man to start laughing, the first sound he had made in months: “The Miracle Brought Forth by the Steam Engine.”
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