The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Farewell to a Hero IT was a long time ago. The great trouble of 1877 had been forgotten. No one could even remotely imagine a railway strike. A...
...Perhaps it has never been so solid as it seemed...
...More than anyone else in town, he would have reason to remember the shattering event that occurred one bright, warm afternoon...
...And, after all, why not...
...To this day, I can recall standing by the tracks and ogling in wonderment as the trains ripped past...
...Despite the fact that several union leaders have spoken out sharply against the President's plan for settling the threatened strike, I suspect even they realize that the present system no longer works and that something new must be tried...
...Almost as regularly as the tolling of the bell in the church spire, the trains thundered through our village, briefly interrupting the flow of conversation at Peltz's Drug Store or Loomis' Grocery...
...But for most of us boys, far from tragedy, the railway represented romance and adventure...
...When the express was finally brought to a halt further up the track, the signs of disaster were evident...
...Sabin rushing out of his flagman's cabin waving his American flag as high as his rather abbreviated stature would permit...
...This sad event was one of the great tragedies in the history of our village...
...Time has passed, and it has caught up with the railroads...
...Sabin was guarding the southern side of the track, and thus was in no position to see what the school kids were up to, let alone to protect them...
...With their sumptuous appointments, they represented the world of wealth and power...
...And so when we rushed with the heedless and exalted speed of children after the eastbound freight, no one saw the New York Central express starting up in a westerly direction...
...Each thundering rumble of an oncoming train brought Mr...
...From the view at the side of the tracks, the world seemed as secure and unchanging as the moon and the sun...
...Sabin were widely envied simply for being connected with so grand a venture as the railroad...
...I suspect, too, that the dignified and impressive-looking engineers of my youth, though they would probably cavalierly denounce the President and his panel for interfering, would also know that their era was at long last drawing to a close...
...I don't know what his status is today, but at that time Casey Jones was as much a part of the national mythology as Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, or the Alamo, if not more so...
...Frankie was stretched across its cow-catcher, a river of blood streaming out of his mouth...
...Firemen, brakemen, conductors, even Mr...
...All that any of us could look forward to in the way of perfect bliss was to be had by sitting in one of those plush dining-car chairs and being served a meal like those enjoyed by the millionaires who zoomed past our dazzled eyes...
...The New York Central's great 12 o'clock express had come snorting and wheezing to a stop just west of the crossing, where our village's entire school population was waiting to chase after another train, a 40-car freight, about to pull out...
...And apparently the railway unions, judging from their recent negotiating position, intend to go on pretending that nothing has changed...
...In a moment his mother was on the scene, sobbing brokenly and, in the thoughtlessness of her grief, denouncing the rest of us for not saving her child...
...A world without freight trains, expresses and the smaller locals with their affectionally given names was undreamed of...
...What especially allured me were the dining cars...
...Reading the report of the six-man panel President Kennedy appointed to look into the problems behind the threatened railway strike, I could not help but feel that this solid world has once again been shaken to its foundations...
...Instantly, brutally, irresistibly, the unseen train snatched up the small body of Frankie McDonald...
...Engineers were looked on as heroic giants...
...The most glaring example of this, of course, is that Diesel engines have long since superseded the old coal-burners, yet 32,000 firemen are kept on the payrolls as if nothing at all has really changed...
...As fate would have it, that day Mr...
...For more than 100 years they have gone on with only a minimum of thought or planning for the future...
Vol. 46 • August 1963 • No. 17
