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Frank keeps bragging about those new locomotives he runs but he doesn’t have a clue about what a real rail man is. All that son of mine talks about is power and speed and gadgets and buttons and gauges and more power and more speed. Power and speed isn’t what makes a train man; smart thinking is what makes a train man. I know what a railroad man is all about, Jake does too, but that boneheaded son of mine didn’t seem to understand. So, I’d finally had enough of it and said to him, “you listen here Frank, I’ve heard you out for two years, now and I’ll tell you about power and speed,,, and Snooky’s Grade. In the days of steam locomotives a man had to think ahead, you couldn’t just push a button or yank a lever and make a train do your bidding. In those days you had to plan a little and hope that somebody’s cow didn’t upset your plan. Steam isn’t like diesel. When you work with steam it takes awhile to build up pressure, it isn’t instant power like they have now, and you don’t just push a button and stop it all that easy either. Folks watch those silly movies about the old days and figure that all a man did was shovel on coal and away you went, hell bent for election. Well, that wasn’t the case. Coal is what we called a slow heat; it took awhile to build the steam to where you wanted it but it was handy because burned for a fair while. There were some problems with coal though. The big problem was that when you shoveled more of it on the fire, that fire sort of cooled off for awhile because it got smothered. Now do you see what I mean, a man had to think ahead because you didn’t want to try to stop in a town for an hour or so with a full head of steam. And when you went up a big grade like Snooky’s you darned well had to have your fire figured out at least five miles in advance. ***** I don’t know how Abner Graham got the nickname Snooky and I don’t know why the track engineers put the rails up the grade on his property instead of going around it. I don’t care why either, the main thing to me was that the hill was there and that I hated it. Snooky’s grade was on the east–west run and it was the one that they gave to new operators like me. The grade turned out to be my bane and I think they should have called the thing a mountain instead of a “long hill”. The line manager thought it was quite the joke to give new engine jockeys a few trips up the hill with a worn out old “Steam Lady” so that he could see how good they would do. After thye learned how to make it up the hill he’d go at and latch a few more cars on just for fun. Then when they couldn’t make it up the next time the manager would give them a better steamer if they kissed up to him real nice. Jake claims the man couldn’t get an intelligent job anywhere else so they put him to work aggravating people because that’s the only thing he was good at. I guess Jake was right. I’d been up the grade seven times now, hauling freight and ore with a passenger car or three up front. Jake and I called Kansas-Tennessee loco number 1 Katy for a short. Most rail men have names for their engines and I told Jake that we were being polite by calling this pile of junk Katy and nothing else. ***** Old Jacob Steinberg was my stoker and he’d seen a lot, every thing from cows riding along on the bumper to flood water up to the axle bearings to old Jedidiah Ferguson standing on the tracks with his played out Henry rifle flagging the train to stop so that he could hop a ride. Jake was smart too and he liked me a lot. He took my side every time when the going got tough. Jake and I had the same taste in whiskey too, and I suppose that might have been part of the reason why he helped me coax that old kick and push with the bent stack up that mean grade seven times instead of easing back and having a chuckle at my expense. The old boy knew just when to do what and how to do it right. Jake would say “right along here Bill, this is the creek before Gilmore’s Crossing, you remember that. Now you open the door, this is where we stoke her, ten shovels for the freight and one more for the passenger car and we’ll get Katy over the hump.” I’d open the door, hand Jake the bottle and he’d take a drink. Then he’d pass it back and start shoveling. Old Jake had it timed perfectly, he’d take one shot of whiskey and we’d have exactly the right amount of coal at exactly the right time and make it over the grade. It was my eighth run and when I looked at the train I darn near hollered. The manager had given me eleven more cars than any loco was meant to haul and every ore car on every hitch was heaped full. I watched the smile on the paper pusher’s face as we pulled out a half-hour later and wished that I had called him more than a monkey the first day that I’d worked for him. “We ain’t going to make it Bill “, Jake said, when we‘d pulled clear of the train yard, “you can’t get this much ore up that grade. Coal just ain’t made for that kind of work and this old tin can couldn’t hold that much steam anyway.” Jake was right about the coal. We made it half way up, came to a stop and I backed that hissing piece of worn out machinery five miles, until we came to Gilmore’s Crossing. Old Jacob looked at me and held out his hand for the bottle. “Not yet Jake, did you ever hear of a flash fire?” “What’re you thinking Bill?” “I’ll tell you after. Just give me a hand; we’re going over the grade faster than a skinned cat today, and make sure you tie the whistle and blow valves open when we get loaded.” Along the rail bed At Gilmore’s Crossing were some old discarded cherry wood track ties. They were tinder dry and ready to burn. Jacob Steinberg looked at me like I’d lost my sense, but after I gave in and gave him a sip we got the ties loaded. The old boy grumbled a bit but I think he’d got an idea of what I was up to and was looking forward to the show because I didn’t even have to remind him about the whistle and valves. Jake started to look a little nervous soon after we got rolling and said, ”you sure this is going to work Bill, because her boilers making some awful funny noises and if I didn’t know any better I’d say her belly’s starting to bulge a little.” I kept my eye on the pressure gage instead of looking at Jake and said,” there’s nothing much to worry about, but you might want to hold onto that whiskey real good because your going to want some pretty soon.” Jake looked at the gage, then at me, then out the window, and said,” I think I’ll have a swallow right now if you don’t mind Bill.” We crossed the flats with the whistle screaming and the pressure valves hissing like crazy. The cows in Harrison’s field got scared and ran for the cedars alone the side of the creek. I thought old Clyde Harrison was going to drop his pipe on his lap and tip out of his rocking chair when I waved and smiled at him. His kids lined up on the porch to see what the heck was going by and his wife left off hoeing the carrots to make for the house so she could hide from all the noise. When we were about mile and a half from the bottom of Snooky’s Grade I opened the throttle the last bit and said, “pass that bottle over Jake.” I leaned out the window after taking a considerable swallow and looked at the smoke pushing up towards the clouds. Then I gave Jake a glance, saw him staring at the pressure gage and saw how pale his face had gone. I handed, the bottle back to him and yelled over the hissing, whistling, and pounding steel, “ take a good drink and toss in some more of that wood Jake, were going up that god damned grade today.” I couldn’t make out what it was that Jake called me before he took a big drink, opened the door and started throwing in more ties. ***** When I put my head back out the window I saw Snooky’s grade coming at us. “How’s the whiskey holding out,” I hollered at the old stoker. Jake yelled back over all the commotion, “it’s going down pretty fast Bill, the sooner we get to town the better.” I looked at the gage again, then realized what he meant. I noticed he was right about the bottle too. It was going down fast. Jake had guzzled a lot more than his usual share. I guess maybe we did have up a good head of steam and I know that we were making quite a racket. I suppose it’s true that we did come over the top of that hill faster than anybody else ever had. And I bet we must have been going some kind of fast for Kincaid tell everybody in town that night that the locomotives wheels came four inches off the tracks for a split second when we topped Snooky’s Grade. That doesn’t mean I believe him though. I never could before and I can’t now either. But whatever it was that Clare saw scared him bad enough to make him leave off jackrabbit hunting right then and there and trot for home and his jug of home brew. Jake had a good point there. We had a whole lot more pressure right now than any engine should have. And we were starting to go down the tuther side of Snooky’s Grade way too fast. “We’ve, got to get rid of the wood Jake.” It’s kind of embarrassing for a good rail man to miscalculate and have to the open the emergency door in the bottom of the firebox and dump his coal, but right then I don’t think that Jake and me were worrying about being embarrassed. Jacob pried the lever back and the coal dumped. Sparks, flames and bits of coal that looked like little comets scattered everywhere along the tracks. Jake yelled, “the coal’s gone but those ties are all jammed up boss.” I looked in at the infernal, cussed a little, grabbed a tie that the old stoker had left in front of the coal door and started pounding. The heat and flames were terrible but I kept pounding and cussing. Sparks were flying everywhere by the time the ties gave way all at once. ***** Then the banging and smashing started. Jake put his head out the side window and looked backwards. “Boss,,, it’s just awful ,,, there’s chunks of burning wood all aver the place and you damned near made us jump the tracks. And you’re mighty lucky it rained good last night or we might as well have left the country. And Bill, there’s some passengers looking out the window and there looking mighty upset.” ***** We rolled into Detlor’s Falls and stopped as gentle as you please. I sent Jake to buy another bottle and he was in such a hurry that he bought this one with his own money for a change. The rest of the run went as nice as pie once we told the riders that we hadn’t done anything unusual and that we hoped they were enjoying their trip and that we’d try to speed things up a bit on the way back. Some of the lady’s grumbled a little because some of the men wanted to go to the tavern for a few minutes but I told them that it was the railroads usual practice too let the men get away from the women for awhile. Jake did even better, he told them that they had a free ticket coming for riding on our line this week. When the line manager heard the story the next day we both got fired, but that was all right. The other company was looking for good men, so Jake and I were pulling rail cars again in no time. We got to have a word or three with that manager before we left though, and that made us glad. I asked him if I could take old Katy with us since her seams were kind of sprung now and she wasn’t much use for anything but making coffee pots out of. Jake told him that he didn’t think her seams were sprung at all. He said that he thought the old gal had got pregnant some how and he thought that he should raise the babies to be good little loco’s. He added that he probably could do a better job at it than the manager. Then I told him that the passengers said that they never had so much fun since they’d been to a circus and was telling all the newspapers about the wonderful ride they’d had. I saw that the manager was starting to get some color in his cheeks by now and looked at Jake. Jake said, “I think we better leave now boss, he’s looking redder than old Kate’s boiler and we’d better get down the line a few miles before he blows.” Frank looked at me and asked, “Are you telling the truth Dad”? “Of course I am “, I told him, then i got up to leave. I figured it was the right time of day to go have a sip with Jake. “Oh, yeah, Frank?” I said when I got to the lawn gate. “What now Dad?” “You tell Gallagher that your Bill Simmons son, and Frank, you ask him if he ever did hand out them free tickets to the lady’s and how come he never did get a promotion. And tell him Jake said hello to, would you do that for me Frank?” By the time I got to the sidewalk Frank was cussing a blue streak. Later on Jake told me he heard him all the way over to his place. |
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