[Vision2020] Riding the Rails with Dad (No, We Weren't Hobos!)

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Hi Sam,

Thanks to you (and to Don Coombs) for your response to this column. I had a fun writing it and it brought back a lot of memories, just as it did for you.  I just barely got through recording it for KRFP because I was just on the verge of choking up about my dad.

I read to the very end of your RR stories and enjoyed every line of it.

Nick
---- Sam Scripter <MoscowSam at charter.net> wrote: 
> Just Four of the afternoon,
> Saturday, May 15, 2010
> 
> Re: Espee on the Siskiyou Line; North Coast Limited
> 
> Hello, Nick . . .
> 
> I was astonished to read your Vision2020 post this morning regarding
> your dad, the railroad man.
> 
> MOVE TO ASHLAND, OREGON
> 
> In 1944, my dad moved the family from [not yet "Lake"] Oswego,
> Oregon, to Ashland, where he and his uncle opened a Marshall-Wells
> hardware store, and a year-plus later, also a General Petroleum,
> Mobilgas station.
> 
> In 1948, we moved from a rural residence to a house in town on
> Scenic Drive, an appropriately named street.
> 
> BINOCULARS, A GIFT FROM POST-WAR JAPAN
> 
> Shortly after, my uncle Donald, a helicopter mechanic in the U.S.
> Army, retired from duty in just-then post-war Japan and brought
> gifts.  This included a wonderful set of 7x50 Japanese binoculars.
> 
> ASHLAND'S SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAIL YARD
> 
>  From about fifth-grade onward, I spent many hours gazing at the
> SP rail yard in Ashland from the vantage point of our up-on-the-hill
> Scenic Drive residence.  According to Google Earth, it was only
> 2/3 mile straight-line viewing distance from my dining room, rocking
> chair seat, through the window, to the near end of the rail yard, and
> 1.1 miles to the far end. I really did have a grand view!!!
> 
> In those days, through freights were mostly still all steam powered
> with an occasional freight with four-unit, "covered wagon" styled
> diesels on the head end.  In fact, my uncle Don thought he heard
> a B-29 bomber coming, but it was a diesel-headed freight going
> south,  ascending, the difficult grade, southbound to California.
> 
> Whether diesel or steam headed, the freights had several steam
> locomotives -- Four to six as I remember. This was one or two at
> the head end, one or two at the rear, and one or two dispersed
> through the train length.
> 
> This was tricky to set up as the partly assembled train had to be
> pulled out of the yard at the south end to enable the locomotives
> to be inserted.  Also, I viewed lots of "steam" from the whistling.
> I gather that radio communication was not enabled and they had
> to listen to whistle blasts to know when to go this direction and
> that, when on-ground flags could not be seen.
> 
> OLD SISKIYOU HIGHWAY OVER CROSSING
> 
> On rare occasions, usually when family members visited from
> Kansas or San Francisco, the family and visitors would drive south
> of Ashland, up the old, old Highway-99, to a point where the
> roadway looped over the rail line.  At that point, SP had a water
> tank and a short, second track. This was named . . . . . . .  It was
> very exciting to be standing on the highway bridge over the
> track and have the steam/exhaust blast only two-three feet
> in front of you as the locomotives passed under!  Also, it was
> quite a feat to position each locomotive, one by one, so its
> tender could take on water.  What a skill, to do this locomotive
> by locomotive, all the while, each locomotive was consuming
> water just taken on!
> 
> Oh, I wish I had been ten years older, with camera . . . But I
> digress.
> 
> SOUNDS OF TRAINS ENTERING ASHLAND
> 
> As a grade school, then junior high child, I'd go to sleep on
> winter and spring nights to the sound of the in-bound train
> from Medford, and maybe beyond.  Typically, it would stop
> a couple of street blocks short of the yard, then wait until
> given permission to proceed. Meanwhile, when the "air was
> right", I could hear sounds of the locomotive.  Then when
> it restarted, in wet weather, I'd hear the locomotive
> wheels slip and the brief, rapid sound of fast turning wheels,
> until I suppose some sand was released and the sound
> changed to the slow grind of trying to get the train started.
> Sometimes this would go through two or three cycles of
> slippage, until the train was entirely under way into the
> yard.
> 
> THE OVERNIGHT "MILK TRAIN"
> 
> Another event during the "good weather" times of the
> year was to run into our "north yard", where we had
> a visual vantage point, for the "on the dot" 6 p.m.
> departure of the passenger train to Portland. In the
> ending years, this comprised six drably painted cars,
> including mail and baggage, plus I guess, two chair
> coaches.
> 
> My dad rode it a few times to Portland for Marshall-
> Wells headquarters meetings.  He hated it, calling it
> the "milk train". I gather that it stopped frequently
> during its night run to pick up five-gallon cans of
> milk.  He complained of getting little sleep sitting on
> hard seats, and with the disruption of starts and
> stops.
> 
> GREAT GRANDMOTHER RODE TRAIN FROM KANSAS
> 
> My great grandmother and her spinster daughter, my
> wonderful Aunt Maude, used this train, too.  They
> would come to Ashland every one to two years from
> their farm residence, five miles from Detroit, Kansas,
> not far from Abilene.  They'd ride a UP Streamliner
> from Abilene to Portland, then catch the southbound
> version of SP's milk train.  The last time my great
> grandmother did this was in the 1950's. She was in
> her mid-nineties.
> 
> PASSENGER TRAIN FROM GRANTS PASS
> 
> I also recall watching for the SP passenger train from
> Grants Pass to California.  Its operation spanned a
> shorter amount of time during my Scenic Drive living.
> I know that it also ceased operations while I lived
> there; I think before the Portland train was discontinued.
> It was more difficult to watch for the southbound
> train from Grants Pass because by the time it got to
> Ashland, it was not precisely scheduable for viewing.
> I rarely saw the northbound version.
> 
> NORTH COAST LIMITED
> 
> My first wife and my young son [now Counselor of the
> Genessee Combined School] moved from Ashland to
> Madison, Wisconsin, in the Fall of 1963, where I took
> up studies for my M.S. and Ph.D.
> 
> Both set of grandparents wanted to see their child --
> my wife, and I -- and their then one grandchild, so
> they paid our way to return the following summer, by
> train, in 1964
> 
> To this end, we took a bus from Madison to Columbus,
> because a train was either not running at all, or not on
> a convenient schedule.  From there, we caught a
> Milwaukee Road passenger train to Minneapolis, where
> we caught the North Coast limited, on the Northern
> Pacific. We had a small compartment in an economy
> sleeper car, chrome exterior. That was two adults
> and a child 18 months or so, in 1964.
> 
> In the middle of the night, in Spokane, our car was
> switched aside and coupled to the Portland section of
> the train. We arrived there at 9-10 on a sunny summer
> morning where we were picked up by one set of parents
> and then taken south either to Riddle or Ashland. And
> we used the reverse to get back to Madison.
> 
> 1970'S TRAIN CHASING
> 
> In the '70's, I used to do a lot of train chasing south of
> Ashland, when the SP freights were still running through
> to California.  I did some, too, in recent years, when the
> short line was operating that far south.  As of last Fall,
> or January 2010, they only operated as far south as
> Phoenix, to service a siding with a propane tanker.
> 
> Well, Nick . . . If you read through my ramblings this
> far, you deserve a medal.
> 
> Anyway, I was stunned to read your piece and promptly
> was motivated to share my tale.
> 
> With best regards,
> 
> Sam Scripter
> MoscowSam at charter.net
> 
> nickgier at roadrunner.com wrote:
> > Greetings:
> >
> > This is my column for the week.  I went light this week so I could study up on the Greek crisis, which, as I will argue, one cannot blame on those evil "Social Democrats" in Europe, and surprise, surprise, right in our own White House!
> >
> > Another light column you've already seen in rough form when I responded to a picture of darling young South Korean accordionists on the Viz.  "Pear Blossoms, Marching Accordions, and Side Zippers" is attached.
> >
> > Nick Gier
> >
> > Riding the Rails with Dad (No, We Weren’t Hobos)
> >
> > When Public Television’s Jim Leher "called" the Santa Fe's Superchief on the Diane Rehm show last month, tears came to my eyes as I remembered my now deceased father, a conductor on the Union Pacific Railroad until 1947.
> >
> > My dad's first grade teacher offered to pay his way through college.  He was too proud to take the offer, and he went to telegraphy school instead.  His first job was on the Chicago&  Northwestern, serving his native Wisconsin, and then on to the mighty Union Pacific.
> >
> > My dad's stories were not as exotic as those told about the Hollywood stars and dignitaries who rode the Santa Fe’s most famous streamliner from Chicago to Los Angeles. His stories were certainly not as intriguing as the tales Leher tells in his new novel--"The Super"—a Southwest U.S. version of Murder on the Orient Express.
> >
> > Still, I never tired of my dad's stories about ordinary freight and passenger trains. I was enthralled when I heard him describe the "Big Boys," some of the largest steam locomotives ever built.  His descriptions of these behemoths swirling in smoke and steam on Wyoming's cold winter mornings are seared in my memory.
> >
> > My brother was born in Omaha--UP headquarters--and I came into the world near the mainline in North Platte, Nebraska.  We rarely ever saw our father when we were little, and he finally made dramatic decision about that problem.
> >
> > My parents met in Evanston, Wyoming, where my maternal grandmother had a boarding house. Late one night my dad came to the house, and Grandma Sadie told him that she had no rooms. My mother was standing right behind her, and, looking straight at the handsome man on her doorstep, she said: "Yes, we do have room!"
> >
> > My dad slept on the sofa, and even though my parents were engaged to other people at the time, they were married two weeks later on a very cold January day in 1942.  For their honeymoon my parents took the train to San Francisco and then up the West Coast. One morning as they topped the Siskiyou Mts. on the border of California and Oregon, the conductor walked the sleeping cars aisles calling out "Happy Valley, Happy Valley." They were descending into the Rogue River Valley, and for my parents it was love at first sight.
> >
> > Back home in Omaha my brother and I would run away every time my dad would come home from his long assignments. We didn't know this strange man. The experience broke his heart, and he decided to give up a well-paying job with the best pension anywhere. My parents sold everything that they could not pack into a 1947 Mercury Coupe, made a bed for us boys in the back, and they headed for "Happy Valley."
> >
> > Passenger service in Western Oregon was already being discontinued in the early 1950s, and I have a vivid memory of my dad putting my brother and me on the last passenger train from Medford to Grants Pass. It was pure excitement all the way.
> >
> > In the summer of 1958 we decided to visit relatives in Wisconsin.  We drove to Portland where we boarded the North Coast Limited to Chicago. Dad’s nostalgia really kicked in when we took the Chicago&  Northwestern, on which he was a telegrapher, to Madison.
> >
> > The toilets smelled really bad on that train to Madison. Later my dad learned that the Chicago&  Northwestern had stopped cleaning them so as to discourage passengers. The freight business was much more lucrative than hauling people.
> >
> > America’s "bottom line" mentality has not always been conducive to the public good, and our neglect of public transportation and basic infrastructure will be part of our undoing in the 21st Century.
> >
> > Nick Gier taught philosophy for 31 years at the University of Idaho.  Read his column about high speed rail at www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/BulletTrain.htm.
> >
> >
> >    
> >
> >
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