Waiting for the Morning Train

Great Lakes Books Series

by Bruce Catton, William B. Catton (Foreword by)

Bruce Catton, whose name is identified with Civil War history, grew up in Benzonia, Michigan, probably the only town within two hundred miles, he says, not founded to cash in on the lumber boom. In this memoir, Catton remembers his youth, his family, his home town, and his coming of age.

With nostalgia, warmth, and humor, Catton recalls it all with a wealth of the logging industry and its tremendous effect on the face of the state, the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic who first sparked his interest in the Civil War, the overnight train trips on long-gone "sleepers," the days of great resort hotels, and fishing in once clear lakes.

Although he writes of a time and place that are no more, his observations have implications that both underline the past and touch the future.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Biography, American History

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Bruce Catton was a distinguished American historian and journalist, best known for his influential writings on the American Civil War. Renowned for his narrative style, Catton brought history to life through richly drawn characters, vivid battlefield descriptions, and a deep understanding of the political and emotional forces that shaped the era. His accessible yet meticulously researched books made him one of the most popular historians of the twentieth century.
Born in Petoskey, Michigan, and raised in the small town of Benzonia, Catton grew up surrounded by Civil War veterans whose personal stories sparked a lifelong fascination with the conflict. Though he briefly attended Oberlin College, Catton left during World War I and served in the U.S. Navy. He later began a career in journalism, working as a reporter, editor, and Washington correspondent. His experience in government service during World War II inspired his first book, The War Lords of Washington (1948).
Catton achieved national acclaim with his Army of the Potomac trilogy—Mr. Lincoln’s Army (1951), Glory Road (1952), and A Stillness at Appomattox (1953)—the last of which earned him the Pulitzer Prize for History and the National Book Award. He went on to publish a second trilogy, The Centennial History of the Civil War, and contributed two volumes to a biography of Ulysses S. Grant, begun by Lloyd Lewis. His other notable works include This Hallowed Ground, The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War, and Waiting for the Morning Train, a memoir of his Michigan boyhood.
In 1954, Catton became the founding editor of American Heritage magazine, further shaping the public’s understanding of U.S. history. In 1977, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Catton’s legacy endures through his vivid portrayals of America’s most defining conflict and his enduring influence on historical writing.

Reviews

[Marj · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I have never read his Civil War books as I have little interest in it but I just might have to read one so I can enjoy his writing again. He writes with clarity, style and gentle humor and takes us back to the time in Michigan when the lumber industry has died and things are in great transition. I love that part of Michigan and my ancestors were a part of that industry which he brought to life for me in a way no other writer has. His reflections on where this country is headed are as relevant now as they were when he wrote it in 1972. This little known book of his deserves more readers!

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful is one word that comes to mind, in reading of bygone days so aptly described by Catton. Yet, disturbing, comes to mind as well, because of Catton's keen political insights into a world that wantonly cut down its timber and mined its copper because technology knows only one speed, and that's full-throtle. His reflections on WW1 and subsequent wars are profound and revealing - there is a madness in the human race, a lust for death of others, perhaps to postpone our own. He reminds the reader: There is no Golden Age. Those who lived then had no idea that we would discover their era and call it Golden. They would laugh at us.

The book has the feel of a morning breakfast with old friends - memories triggering memories, building upon one another with both reason and not ... a flow of consciousness ...

His treatment of Christianity comes from the inside of the faith - he reaches for the biggest ideas, but remains skeptical, as we all should. Certainty is the death of truth; skepticism is truth's best friend.

His views of the human race are dour - Catton knows too well the stories of war - what it does to us all, and how we love to glorify it, lest we see its true horror.

A worthy read of a very worthy man.

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I swear, Bruce Catton could have written a text-book on the lives of dust mites and I would read it cover to cover. His writing is clear and lucid, and some of the best of it can stay with you long after you close the book. I first read his great Civil War histories more than 30 years ago. This memoir gives you something of the man himself, and another opportunity to treat yourself to a view of the world through his pen.

What has surprised me most about this book is that he writes so little about the old veterans of the Civil War purported to be the inspiration for a life of writing about that epoch. The little he does say is that as a young man, he found the aging veterans pathetic and felt sorry that the world they had known had passed away. This was not at all what I expected but I have to say I am delighted at this unexpected turn. Perhaps it was not what they had become in their dotage that inspired him, but the desire to know them in their prime.

The theme of this book is that technology has led the world beyond its traditional limitations and that chaos and destruction have followed in its path.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a special book to me and while it does not reach the level of his award winning Potomac Trilogy, this book is personal. It is after all a memoir and I would encourage everyone to read memoirs of any famous authors. There are few that disappoint.

I grew up in Michigan doing many of the boyhood adventures featured in this book and my father (closer to Catton’s generation) grew up in northern Michigan even closer to Catton’s hometown of Benzonia featured so I am familiar with this area it is one of the prettiest places in the Midwest, although to be honest the winters are brutally cold.

This is also a memoir about a changing world and as the title suggests trains figure prominently. When Catton was born in 1899, there were no airplanes, no mass produced automobiles, no paved roads, no world wars, no social security, no nuclear bombs and no health care. That would all change in the ensuing decades.

Years ago, I had decided that If I had a time machine, I would first go back and visit this time in the early 20th century. You see my grandparents were born in the 1800s and I’ve always had a fascination with how they dealt with a world that was advancing so rapidly. It must have been unsettling. Catton always me to time travel in his memoir.

But Catton - he was America’s eminent Civil War historian after all - does not write with rose colored glasses. He writes that it is true that life was simpler back then and there were many pleasures to be thankful for. We all think our lives were simpler back in our youth and it is true but as Catton emphasises we were blinded to our parent’s anxieties and they were plentiful and real. He tells of his father’s generation and the generations before that just scraping by in a day-to-day existence. But he juxtaposes all of this with stories of sledding and fishing and buying penny candies at the store and of the pretty girls at the local beach.

His father was the principal of a local normal school and was not immune to money problems. Just trying to keep a school afloat in a logging town that was dying on the vine. The passenger railroads that would be gone in a few years made for an interesting backdrop and an oddly nostalgic read for me.

Anyway, if you have the time to read, I can highly recommend. This narrative is vivid - a true 1900 time capsule.

4.5 stars

[Jeff Garrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review from an old blog of mine focusing on trains:

Bruce Catton, Waiting for the Morning Train: An American Boyhood (Great Lakes Books, 1972; republished by Wayne State Univ. Press, 1987)

Although trains appear in the title, this isn't technically a railroad book. Instead, the author tells about growing up in small towns in upper Michigan in the early years of the 20th century, the waning days of the White Pine logging industry. The Morning Train is a metaphor for leaving home as one goes out into the world. In his last chapter, "Night Train," the author talks about his father's death as he himself waits for the last train. Even though this is not strictly a railroad book, there are several good descriptions of "jerkwater trains" that crisscrossed the region. The Pere Marquette, that "was often in receivership, and was half-affectionately referred to as the Poor Marquette," the Manistee and Northeastern, the Ann Arbor railroad and the Boyne City, Gaylord and Alpena. As the railroads were mostly built to support logging operations, they were at best temporary. One of highlights of Catton's early years was visiting relatives in Minnesota. Taking the Ann Arbor from Beulah to Thompsonville (a short trip), where they had to walk over to the Pere Marquette station and wait for a night train to Chicago. Once in Chicago, they board one of the first class lines: the Northwestern, the Milwaukee Road or the Burlington. These trains boasted ballast roadbeds, double tracks and automatic switches. After riding on them, it was always a letdown to come back into the woods of northern Michigan.

Although Northern Michigan didn't have the grand railways that connected Chicago with the rest of the nation, Ernest Hemingway also used the logging railroads in his writings. In his short stories on the "Big Two-Hearted River," takes a train across the Upper Peninsula to the river he plans to fish. In an unfinished novel that's published in the Complete Short Stores of Ernest Hemingway, the author starts out on a train heading south from the north country (Hemingway's family had a cabin on Walloon Lake).

[Rebecca Wilkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was published in 1972 and I read it in January 1973. I got it down from the shelf after watching a show on Ernest Hemingway who spent some of his youth in upper Michigan and I thought the book I had was by him. However it is this book and it is by Bruce Catton who wrote books on the Civil War. So I read it again 48 years later. Catton is a historian and so there is a lot about the history of Michigan which is what attracted me to the book in the 1970's in the early years of my flight from my childhood home. Growing up there I don't remember that we studied too much Michigan history as it was just all around us in some ways---the old forts and things with Indian names. Since I was starting to pursue genealogy I had come across the County Books which give the history of each county and discuss early settlers. But Michigan was not a big historical site since no Civil War or Revolutionary battles happened there. Even Catton says "There did not seem to be any important places in Michigan."

However Catton was born in 1899 so he is the generation of my grandparents who were all born in Michigan or the Midwest. But he grew up farther north in what he tells me were once the pine forests that even by his time had been mostly chopped down. I don't think we ever contemplated what used to be where the corn fields and now soybean fields are today. But Catton tells me that I was far enough south in Michigan to have hardwoods not piney forests. Catton grew up after the destruction in his area of Benzonia when the towns were dying out since the trees had been the only major resource and they were gone. "A backwoods community that has lost its woods can be a confusing place." But by 1970 when he is writing his memoir he notes that in his lifetime what he calls technology has grown so strong that it is trampling resources and is in the process of destroying the planet. He says: "There is no 20th century culture; the 20th century is simply a time of transition and the noise of things collapsing is so loud that we are taking the prodigious step from the 19th to the 21st century without a moment of calm in which we can see where we are going. Between the 19th and 21st centuries there is a gulf as vast as the one the stone-age Indians had to cross." He had to have heard the 60's song "Eve of Destruction" and felt the weight of the 1960's in his final years. Imagine what Mr. Catton and our grandparents would think of this 21st century where the results of our mad dash for "progress" have taken us. He says of his north country then "the land was left scarred and bruised with radar domes to indicate that the age of applied technologies advanced as a visible symbol of the age of fear---an outpost of national defense."

Catton says: "Returning from a trip to the moon, an astronaut remarked soberly: "Now we can go anywhere." He was correct and that is why this generation is so confused. It is trying to adjust itself to something that is beyond its understanding."

In Catton's youth the trains were still the main way to travel and they crisscrossed the state of Michigan and came near enough to Benzonia for his family to board and go visit relatives. But his metaphor and title of the book is the quote "Early youth is exactly like old age; it is a time of waiting before a big trip to an unknown destination. The chief difference is that youth waits for the morning limited and age waits for the night train." Catton took the morning train and lived in New York where he wrote highly acclaimed books on the Civil War (he had known veterans of that war in his childhood) but he maintained a summer home in northern Michigan where he boarded the night train in 1978.

[Alice Harbin]

NF/A Tells of his growning up in Benzonia, MI, son of an educator who was instrumental in organizing a preparatory school-academy which he attended. He gives much information about the lumbermen and the destruction of the wilderness. He especially emphasizes the changes in that industry which led to it’s end; that is faster and more efficient ways to transport the logs, cut the logs, and use more than just pine wood. Then the forests were gone. This began a theme which was about the changes that modern society experienced and how it was necessary to adjust life to those changes. Later he writes about the changes in the ways that wars were fought, starting with the Revolutionary, Civil, WWI and WWII. In the end man was capable of destroying the enemy, not just winning against their armies. At books end, he has just graduated and is going to college, a change to anarchy as far as his life stye went. His father was changing careers; left the academy, saw it’s end, and began traveling and speaking about WWII, later writing about it. As Bruce was waiting to begin his life, his father was facing life’s end; both waiting for the train; the morning and the night. Excellent book!

[Bradley Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

An intimate, personal, deeply perceptive memoir by a world-class historian.

On one level, this is Civil War chronicler Bruce Catton describing his own boyhood in Benzonia, Michigan, in the early twentieth century. But it's also an achingly nostalgic account of life in a small town, a sober historian's analysis of the economic and environmental destruction wreaked by the get-in-get-out extractive businesses of the late 19th century, a thoughtful essay about the human race and its troubled relationship with technology, a son's tribute to his father's hard work and wisdom, and a moody reflection on the metaphorical "morning train" that takes each of us away from our childhood into adulthood, and the "night train" that eventually takes us... somewhere else. Sometimes it's several of these things at once. If this were the only book Bruce Catton had ever written, he'd deserve to be remembered for it.

[Richard Noble · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book at Torch Lake, Michigan in the early 1980's. The town Catton writes about, Benzonia, is near Torch Lake. Catton evokes a time long past in this autobiography of his youth in northern Michigan. He writes as an old man looking back at his childhood and puts his childhood in the context of the then-present time, the 1960's. It is interesting to see how a historian writes historically about his own life. I have re-read this book several times.

[Steven May · Rating 3 out of 5]

Catton's has a unique twist of phasing which added to the enjoyment of this book. The memories of a life long gone were brought positive feelings of a simpler time. But Catton reminds us life doesn't stand still; changes are inevitable and often impact us far differently then what was perceived at the time. He suggest mans motives are not always altruistic but based in greed and selfishness. The book was a slow but good read.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book started very slow but became more interseting as it progressed. Bruce Catton in a reknown Civil War historian and he approached this memoir in the same fashion. I especially found the parts about the logging of the primal forests of Michigan interesting. The book provides a deep longing for a long ago past -- a much simpler time.

[John Minster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible book. Catton is prescient, thoughtful, interesting and funny. He has such a wonderful and unique way of explaining things. It helps that I grew up in the same area he did, but I absolutely love this book with all my heart. It is also a testament to Catton's writing that I don't particularly agree with a lot of his thematic points, but I thoroughly enjoyed the book nonetheless.

[Mark Banaszak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just read some of his Civil War books, and I heard that this book had a lot to do with his life growing up in rural Michigan. It was much more than that; an excellent slice of history of rural life early 1900s as well as a reflection of the course of history up to that point and from that point on. Good book.

[C.E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Catton is known for his remarkable histories of the Civil War. Here, he turns his knack for storytelling to his boyhood, growing up in Northern Michigan. Part history, part memoir and full of Catton's warm voice, good humor and knack for dead-on descriptions.

[Marlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were great anecdotal stories of the Benzonia area.

[Richard Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up Bruce Catton's "Waiting for the Morning Train" because I wanted to learn a bit more of Michigan history in the early twentieth century. I was not disappointed; it was a thoroughly enjoyable read. The story was mostly centered around Catton's youthful days growing up in Benzonia, Michigan, where the locals started an academy to promote higher levels of education. It was a hopeful time when altruism and high-mindedness were common stock in trade. You would have to work hard, physically, mentally, and spiritually, if you were ever to make something of yourself. No one was going to hand it to you.

There are many stories about the once thriving lumber industry, how blind greed devastated Michigan forests, and how some of these lumber towns recovered in the aftermath. Catton's family traveled quite often by railroad; tracks led from Petoskey and Traverse City to Grand Rapids and Detroit. Railroad companies that had benefited from generous government land grants soon became the owners of great tracts of pine forests. By the time World War I began, the Michigan lumber era had exhausted itself, leaving behind enormous barren fields of stumps and slash.

What is most enjoyable in this story is Catton's philosophical and light-hearted take on the coming of endless change. He is upbeat and optimistic about our future, and yet clear-eyed and cautious. Americans still have a can-do spirit and believe they can achieve whatever they put their mind to. It's the greedy, profit-at-any-cost corporations that we have to watch out for, the hair-trigger military mindset that might easily lead us into another worthless and wasteful war that exhausts this country's blood and treasure.

I grew up in a small Michigan town, Sault Ste. Marie, and I can appreciate trying to make the most of what you have. Adventure is where you find it, especially if you have a lively imagination and a few daring friends. I felt honored and excited to spend time with Bruce Catton during an era long gone. You will too.

[Jon Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Page 252

…Old age, as I said before, is like youth in this one respect; it finds one waiting at the railroad junction for a train that is never going to come back; and whether the arrival and possible destination of this train is awaited with the high hopes that youth entertains when it waits for its own train depends, no doubt, on the individual. I think father had hopes.

But you know how it can be, waiting at the junction for the night train. You’ve seen all the sights, and it is a little too dark to see any more even if you did miss some, and the waiting room is uncomfortable and the time of waiting is dreary, long-drawn, with a wind from the cold north whipping curls of of past the green lamps on the switch stands. Finally, far away yet not so far really, the train can be heard; the doctor (or station agent) hears it first, but finally you hear it yourself and you go to the platform and get on. And there is the headlight, shining far down the track, glinting off the steel rails that, like all parallel lines, will met in infinity, which is after all where this train is going. And there by the steps of the sleeping car is the Pullman conductor, checking off his list. He has your reservation, and he tells you that your berth is all ready for you. And then, he adds the final assurance as you go down the aisle to the curtained bed: “I’ll call you in plenty of time in the morning.”
…in the morning.

[E · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bruce Catton was one of the most highly esteemed Civil War historians of the last century. He wrote this memoir in 1972 about his childhood in a tiny town in northern lower Michigan. It's certainly one of the best memoirs I've ever read.

Catton combines an exquisite sense of time and place with deeply moving reflections on history, community, and change. I learned far more than I was expecting about the 19th-century lumber industry in this book, but I also thought more deeply that I ever had about what we lose when a generation of war veterans passes away. Catton grew up watching Grand Army of the Republic gatherings that faded away as the men died. (We should be thinking about the same thing as the WWII generation is nearly gone. I'm not convinced our country can fashion men like that anymore.)

Catton's father also led a struggling college that became an academy but failed to survive. The institution was founded early in the town's history--the town itself was founded by pious, serious Christians who took the wilds of Michigan not too unlike pilgrims in a barren land. Another spirit of dedication that we could learn from, even as it's passed away.

I don't even remember now why this work was recommended to me, but I'm certainly glad it was. The book is well worth searching out and getting one's hands on.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book used appropriately enough in the up north Michigan town of Northport, a short ways from where the book is set in Benzonia, Michigan. Bruce Catton is known for his award-winning Civil War books, but he had a quiet upbringing in a small out-of-the-way Michigan Village that had seen the last of the logging in timbering industry. There is a sincere sense of innocence and simplicity to his growing up in such a small settlement, but he uses his decades of experience to weave in much deeper philosophies of the world. One theme is his focus on mans’ destructive tendencies through the stories of both local Civil War veterans and the, destructive timber industry of the day, which cut down nearly every stand of trees possible in Michigan There is also a deep sense about the miracle of life and existence, reminiscent of Thorton wilders Our Town (coincidentally both ended up at Oberlin and not completing their degrees.). I highly recommend this book as one who is enjoyed many memoirs.

[Connie Faull · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to pick a book to read for my Michigan History class, and this was available on Kindle. I'm not a fan of memoirs unless they read like novels, but this one did not. Bruce Catton was a well known historian, especially his books about the Civil War. I felt that his writing was clunky at times and it made it difficult for me to read. This book is a combination of a history of the state of Michigan, in particular the west side of the state where Catton grew up, and part coming of age memoir. Catton was born in the late 1890s and the book takes place through 1917 or 1918. However, Catton didn't write this book until 1972 and as an older man he was looking back on his childhood and our history as a country, but also our history as mankind, and his insights were very relevant even today. I think if you really like nonfiction or memoirs you may like this book, just wasn't really my cup of tea.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read on the area where I grew up. I found his reflections on the workings of the lumber industry and railroads most intriguing. His stories help me better understand many old photos I’ve seen. I especially appreciated the last 2 chapters and his thoughts on the influence of the Industrial Age on human kind and our transition to believing we are limitless and therefore our adoption of the illusion that we control our destiny. He suggests there is a cost to this and that it has been brought to bear particularly in times of war since then. His knowledge of the Civil War and WWI clearly informed his perspective. Interesting too to finish the book the same week as the violent attack on the US Capitol. I see shadows of the threat of history repeating itself. I am glad I stuck with the book: his style is not necessarily easy. But I appreciated the history lessons and it has inspired me to read more history.

[Mary O'Rourke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bruce Catton is best known for his several books about the Civil War. This is a memoir of his childhood spent in Benzie County in Northwest Michigan. Born at the turn of the 19th century, he was fairly insulated from the world at large in his rural community of Benzonia. It was idyllic, if somewhat dull. He does a fine job of detailing the history of the lumber industry that northern Michigan was known for in the late 1800's, as well as the small-scale yet important shipping that took place on the Great Lakes. He also touches on period train travel and the tourist industry in its infancy. His father was headmaster of the short-lived Benzonia Academy, of which Catton was among one of the last graduating classes before leaving Michigan to attend Oberlin College.
Bruce Catton is an exceptional writer, and does a fine job of describing in a straight-forward manner a long-gone way of life without sentimentality.

[Becky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Of interest because I am from the west coast of Michigan and am familiar with Benzie County and many of these small towns and lakes that are referenced in the book. Learned a lot about the history of the development of the state and the logging industry. After the first half of the book, it seemed to get a little tedious and at times preachy, but I understand the reminiscing of the times, the childhood, and the nostalgia. I miss the atmosphere of respect for others these small towns had. I am glad I read the book, but the second half was not as interesting or enjoyable as the first half.

[Streator Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite possibly the weirdest (in a good way) memoir I have read. Written by a guy famous for writing excellent histories of the American Civil War, this is, sort of, the story of his early years in rural Michigan at the beginning of the 20th century. But, being written in the 1970's has definitely influenced what he wrote about and how he reflected upon the times that have passed. The really sad part is that all his ruminations 40 years ago about how the human race has evolved (yes, its all part of the histroy, weirdly enough) are even more timely today. Sad though that statement is to make. An excellent reminder of where we, as a nation have come. Read it....

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like me, the author grew up in Michigan and chose to reside in the South later in life. In this childhood memoir he waxes nostalgic on the disrupted Native American civilizations, such as what the aboriginal metallurgists would have done given the time. A more present absence is the vast Michigan forests of pine. This extraction really kicked into high gear as part of the post-Civil War Reconstruction and continued apace. Catton's life resolves greatly around the Academy of Benzonia and he his time ends there as the very institution meets his demise completing a theme of postcard small time life receding into the past.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great writer!! A sort of folksy style that makes the pithy philosophical observations hit you right between the eyes before you know they’re coming. I grew up in lower Michigan, moved to Ohio decades ago and now have a vacation home in Frankfort. We drive to Benzonia for one reason and another nearly every day when we visit and I will never see it the same way again. A fond look back to another era. Also a look into the dichotomies of thought as senseless as ours in the 21st century that cause irreparable harm to person and nature.

[Anne Vandenbrink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Growing up in Benzonia in the 1900s. Centered around the Benzonia Academy as his father was the headmaster. Great stories of the town, the locals and the surrounding area. He also includes historical vignettes of the Native Americans of Michigan and the lumber boon in this area. I especially enjoyed his detailed description of living in a lumber camp with his Dad, who was writing a report about it. They were living in Boyne City at that time when the Boyne River was full of pine logs being herded towards the lumber mills at the mouth of Lake Charlevoix.

[Lynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is a comforting read to experience life from the eyes of boyhood in small town Michigan during the early 1900's. There were tough times in town and country but the calming part is the everyday life of tromping through the woods and sledding. Perhaps I especially liked it because I have been to Benzonia (also home to the late Gwen Frostic). Soothing read to escape to what really weren't any easier or better times but it just seems so.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book because I grew up spending summers in the Benzonia area. I was hoping to find a well written description of a place I know well from another era, which I am happy to say I found, but I was not expecting such a personally relevant discussion on coping with change and despair in a rapidly changing world. This book articulated my highest hopes and my deepest despair, and reminded me that they are two sides of the same coin.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting historical read because I live near the small town featured in the book. It features a lot of Catton's philosophies and general commentaries which aren't as interesting to me.Third time reading it over the past 25 plus years.