Ellen's Mandy Patinkin Page |
Architectual Digest June 2003 |
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Right on Track MANDY PATINKIN SHARES THE NOSTALGIC PULL OF HIS FAVORITE PASTIME |
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Late at night, when the rest of the world is flipping channels, one wants to believe that Mandy Patinkin is in quiet thought, rehearsing Ibsen or his latest episode of Showtime's Dead Like Me, or searching for a new shade of world-weary meaning in a Sondheim lyric. But the actor gets into a different role most nights, a character who likes to push buttons: Ski gondola. Blinking lights. Building lights. Porch lights. Station lights. Street lights. Oil derrick. Beacon. Milk car. Water tower. "This I love," Patinkin says, slipping into reverie as Lionel Log Loader #164, vintage 1950, swings a tree trunk from a flat car to a clear-plastic riverbed. "You come here late at night, and you're in fantasyland."
Curtain up. Light the lights. Load the cattle car. "I was involved in the theater of trains long before I was interested in the theater itself," says Patinkin, having spent more than 40 years at the throttle. His father gave him his first train at the age of eight, but it was not until he married Kathryn Grody, and his sons, Isaac and Gideon Grody-Patinkin, came of age, and the spoils of theatrical success were finally his, that all those youthful hours coveting Lionel catalogues were once and forever avenged. "The wives in my world call themselves train widows," he reminds us.
The hobby of Patinkin’s childhood, with its four-by-eight sheets of plywood and callow echoes of Boys' Life, has changed beyond recognition. Today's enthusiasts like to recreate a time and place in eerie, obsessive detail. Locomotives have chips in them, and controls are computerized. Fiber-optic cameras capture the engineer’s view on video. The Patinkin house in New York, is on a 60-acre farm with renovated pig and horse barns and chicken coops. It has a relaxed, handcrafted air, with salvaged barn wood on its walls and candy-colored chenille tossed over the living room sofa. The farm buildings were converted and expanded by architect Lewis Waruch, who also built the benchwork for the railroad. More than 1,500 feet of O-gauge track and 10,000 feet of wiring, executed by Richard Roman, of East Coast Enterprises, and engineered by David Barrett, of Depotronics, fill the second floor of a barn.
"The trains interest me the least," Patinkin says. "I'm not so much a collector as a player. Everything is immediately unpacked and played with." Most of the shopping was done at an annual extravaganza in York, Pennsylvania, the Brimfield of electric trains and a dangerous place. One innocently sets out to stock up on Proto Smoke fluid and returns with too many orange Lionel boxes and a guilty conscience. "The first time I went, I filled our car," Patinkin admits. "I simply can't go to York anymore." The actor brought all his stage resources to the railroad he calls "the story of our lives." The People's Iron & Metal Co. honors the family scrap business back in Chicago. (Uncle Harold cried when he saw it.) A cousin supplies genuine Patinkin metal shavings to use with Lionel Triple-Action Magnetic Crane #182, vintage 1949. A diner is named for Patinkin's mother; Kath's Book & Cafe Shop is a wink at his wife; for Gideon Grody-Patinkin, an amusement park twirls and twinkles, with rides from Marshall Reed's Scale Amusements. In a nod to Isaac Grody-Patinkin, an avid climber, various back-to-nature types scale a cliff.
Gideon and Isaac Grody-Patinkin, now 16 and 20, if not quite as besotted with trains, have always stayed involved, for their father's sake. For holidays and birthdays they would give vouchers for "100 trees" or "100 hours of work." Together, father and sons would create trees from twigs, foam and theatrical sagebrush. Patinkin recalls, "We made trees till the cows came home." And then they worked on the cows. As in the theater, the stage is brought to life with lighting and music. Blue klieg lights were programmed from dawn to dusk by Eric Cornwell, who lights Patinkin's concerts. "Now listen to this," says a very excited Patinkin, as the walls start to reverberate with the oom-pah sound of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra. The music comes from an automotive CD changer filled with sound effects, like Richard Nixon's resignation speech, one of dozens of historic addresses available on demand at the Speakers Platform. Yet the singer's own sweet tenor is nowhere to be heard. “Are you kidding?” he says, utterly horrified. "This is for me to get away from me."
Advances in digital electronics may be thrilling, but they cannot compare to the Rosebud aspect of the pastime. "The things I care about, really care about," says Patinkin, "are the pieces I had as a kid." The engine missing a light, the American flag with 48 stars, the milk car that was loaded and unloaded relentlessly one fateful day until it finally overheated and started to melt-"If I ever lost these things," he says, "I would be heartbroken." Text by Stephen Drucker/Photography by Billy Cunningham |
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