‘Because our daddy owned it’

Boston & Maine Railroad map as of 1916.

”We would walk to the railroad station
then hop along the platform while mother
straightened her hat and checked to be sure
The Pass was in her purse, because
that meant we rode the B&M for free,
because our daddy owned it.’’

—From “The Magic Show,’’ by Mary Spofford French (born 1932), a New Hampshire-based writer

Littleton, Mass., B&M depot in 1910.