It’s very hard to keep a train club going through a hard economic downturn. Our older members get, well, older, and younger members just aren’t that common anymore. Its really not the high-speed, instant-gratification hobby they want. So there you are.

But as money gets tighter, as we’ve got to pay for everything from paper towels to trailers, it doesn’t help that we are in a white-slum, corn pone neighborhood. It’s just white-trash, trailers, pickups, tattoos, and about six teeth total. And they’ve been ripping us off.

First it was the AC copper. Then came the five rapid break ins two years ago (including one Christmas day). There was also the criminal trespass, the doughnuts on the grounds (for which we put up a fence), the smashing of our pouch chairs, all this.

Today I came out and found the lock on the shed cut off and the lawn mower gone. $1700 of assets, just vanished. It was locked in, chained down, all that. I just stood there in the open doorway, looking at the cut chain links and the empty floor, and thought “Jesus Christ, now WTF?”

All this has been going on over the last four years. Its like a surge of crime out there. And over and over, the club is having to bear the cost of it. I don’t know if we can survive it or not. Every so often, I really want to toss up my hands and walk away.

Fucking animals.