Self Absorbed Boomer, who was at the Brooklyn Blogade Roadshow, is one of the few people who knows that Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn is a take-off on Only the Dead Know Brooklyn, a short story by Thomas Wolfe.

SAB writes about a train trip to the Adirondack’s while reading "Pages from a Cold Island" by Fred Exley. I’ve never read a word by Fred Exley but I found this post very interesting.

I decided to bring Pages with me on this trip because I was
headed into Exley country. He grew up in Watertown, New York, and, in
his later years, he sometimes stayed with his widowed mother at her
house in Alexandria Bay, the principal town of the Thousand Islands
region, to which Larry, my stepfather-in-law, had promised to take Liz
and me during our visit. Indeed, I thought I had read or heard that the
"cold island" of the title was one of the Thousand, where Exley had
camped out in a cabin while writing the book. Besides, Exley seemed an
appropriate companion for a train trip. According to his bio,
while still in high school he worked in the rail yards at Watertown.
Later, he did public relations work for the New York Central, and after
that for the Rock Island. So Exley at least shared, if not my love of,
at least an affinity for, railroads.