Cabooses & Cabbages

I miss cabooses! My 6 year-old granddaughter has never seen and will never see a real train with a caboose. If it weren't for children's books like "The Caboose That Got Loose" and "The Little Engine That Could", she probably wouldn't even know what a caboose looks like! I'm guessing that the word "caboose" will be dropped from our vocabulary by the time she's in her 20's. (Yikes! It's happening already! The spell checker on this program is telling me "caboose" should be replaced with "cabbage"!)
Cabooses were cool. After waiting and waiting and waiting for a slow-moving freight to clear a crossing, I always enjoyed waving to the guys in the caboose as they rumbled by at the end train. More often than not, they waved back. I always wondered what it was like inside a caboose and how it felt to ride in the cupola on top.
Trains without cabooses look truncated, like an arm without a hand. That little red box they stick on the back of the last car is a sorry substitute for a jaunty red caboose.