Railroad Man (20 page)

Authors: Alle Wells

Flo didn’t complain about Jeannie’s control over her household. She was happy watching the television, shopping, and going out to eat with Sophia in the evenings. Flo and I slept in separate rooms and lived separate lives in the same house. Jeannie and I planted shrubbery and flowers in the yard. We put some lawn furniture in the backyard to sit in when we got tired. We sat in the kitchen, talked, and watched the birds out the back window. Sometimes Flo joined us in the kitchen, but she quickly grew tired of our conversation and returned to the television.

I finished the last years of my career with the railroad on an eastbound line to Savannah. I’d spent so many years in the foothills that the flat, coastal plains were a refreshing site. During the summer months along my coastal run, I’d fish off a pier in the evenings and watch the tide roll in. I ran the eastern line until 1974 when I retired from the railroad with a handshake and a plaque commemorating my distinguished service. The railroad provided me with a good living and a good retirement. Being away from home during the week helped me put up with what was lacking there.

After my retirement, Jeannie had a stroke and now lives in a nursing home. I take her some flowers on my weekly visit, a small payment to the woman who saved a broken man.

Chapter XIII

The Secret Place

1978

The boy shakes my shoulder. “Mr. MacDonald, your rental car is outside.”

I open my eyes to the bright sun shining through the gleaming Texaco window. My body had become stiff sleeping in the metal chair. The boy extends a hand to help me up. I don’t refuse. I nod, say thanks, and wave goodbye to my old buddy talking on the phone.

A bright yellow Ford Pinto waits for me in front of Jack’s station. I wish they hadn’t sent a compact or a Ford. I’m a GM man; all railroad men are. I transfer the dirty laundry from my darn good-looking Buick to the tin can. The car putts through the drive-thru window of the laundromat and then to Hardees. I order a double serving of grits and two of their homemade biscuits.

I park the tin can in front of my garage door. I follow the cement walk that leads to the small basement door. I unlock the dead bolt and flip on the light. Twenty years ago, I removed the steam furnace and covered the cement block walls with paneling. I boarded up the door that led to the main floor of the house, built a half-bath and a kitchenette along the outside wall.

A wooden plaque engraved with the word “Riverside” hangs over the door. Tattered netting covers a safari hat hanging from a hook next to the door. I walk across the blue and red diamond-patterned rug and set my breakfast on the countertop underneath the window overlooking the backyard. House Finches, Chickadees, and Titmice twitter around the birdfeeder outside the window.

I fill the pot with water from the sink, pour some chicory coffee in the percolator basket, and plug it in. I rake the grits into a dark blue bowl etched in an Indian design and heat them in the microwave oven. When the coffee is done, I wrap a blue and yellow shawl with a zigzagged design over my shoulders and lean back in the recliner. The landscape of Tern Lake catches my eye. I’ve never been back to Tern Lake since Marianne died. I heard that the State of Alabama turned it into a park. She would like that.

I eat the grits and biscuits in peace, surveying the walls around me. My little Dottie’s portraits line the wall in front of me. Across from her, a Blue Heron stands on one foot holding a small fish in his bright yellow beak. Next to him a tiny red, white, and blue Kingfisher sits erect and alert on a bare tree branch. Lining the walls are sturdy wooden shelves that display an array of brightly painted pottery etched in delicate floral designs. My own electric pottery wheel sits on a small table below with pieces of pottery in various stages waiting to be fired in the gas oven.

I click the remote connected to a replica of the Appalachian foothills and valleys of the Georgia-Alabama Line.

“
Choo-choo!” I say softly as the whistle blows.

Steam puffs from the smokestack as the Baldwin 534 leaves a 1930 model of the Terminal Station. The brakeman waits for a signal from the yard master standing in the center of the yard to clear the way. A flagman waving a bright red flag hangs at a ninety degree angle from the railing of the caboose. Next to the rail, toy people huddle by a campfire behind a clump of miniature trees. A uniformed conductor waves from inside the gold-plated dining car of a passenger train in the Golden Age of the Railroad. Whistle stops made from Popsicle sticks, painted red and trimmed in green, wait around each bend. At the stick building marked Huntsville Station, a beautiful redhead stands next to an old Model T and waits for her railroad man.

This is my secret place. Every man needs one.

The End

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to my editor and friend, S. M. Ray, and Mr. John Wagoner, Interpretive Volunteer at the North Carolina Transportation Museum. Digital research sites are listed below.

Lisa’s Nostalgia Café – the 1930’s

http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1938.html

http://railga.com/Depots/atlterminal.html

http://whatwasthere.com/browse.aspx#!/ll/33.764232635498,-84.38247680664062/zoom/7/

http://www.midcenturyhomestyle.com/inside/bathrooms/1940s/gallery/page08.htm

http://railroadjobguide.info/railroad-carmen-job-description/

http://ourgeorgiahistory.com/ogh/Atlanta,_Georgia_(1900-2000)

http://atlantahighered.org/civilrights/essay_detail.asp?phase=1

http://www.utu.org/worksite/about_utu/local_chairmans_manual/chairmans_manual.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Rolling_Mill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabbagetown_(Atlanta)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_Bag_and_Cotton_Mills