Stories of our Lives : The train always comes at the same time
Posted on Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Editor's Note: Members of the Lifewriting class at the Rogers Adult Development Center were asked to submit their stories to The Rogers Hometown News. We hope that this will become a regular addition to our editorial page with a variety of writing styles and a multitude of memories representing the diversity that makes Rogers what it is today. Martha Hogan Estes with her husband and children lived in Rogers among other places in Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma when their family was young, before returning to the University of Arkansas. She recalls living a half block from Dixieland when it was just a dirt road as well as taking her babies down to look at the progress on Beaver Lake when it was being built. She is a co-teacher / facilitator of the Lifewriting groups and will be reading with the group in the December stories program.
Pennies on the Track Always the railroad was there, near the house, by the school, along the highway, over the river and downtown where it crossed Main on its way to the smelter and the stockyards.
We crossed tracks on the way to the Corner Grocery, the local school, the Salvation Army or the Saturday matinee at the movie on the square. We walked down the tracks to Grandpa and Granny Hogan's house and to Aunt Alta's place or to the city dump where we sometimes found pretty bottles and mismatched china cups with missing handles and saucers without cups. Mama and Aunt Alta set the saucers under clay flowerpots and planted African violets or fragrant herbs in the cups.
When Daddy met us at Granny's to walk us back home, he gave us copper or zinc pennies to put on the railroad track where it ran behind our house. After placing the coins very carefully on the steel rails, my brother Billy and I would sit on the back steps to wait for the afternoon freight to pass. Every few minutes one of us stepped down to the track to check the pennies and to peer to the north to see if the train was coming around the bend before returning to our perch on the steps. Daddy and Mama and our little brother Joe would stand inside the screen door and watch too.
Often we would wait as long as half an hour watching from the steps, not realizing the train came by at exactly the same time each day; perhaps we didn't understand why Daddy's Uncle George needed that perfectly dependable and wonderful railroad watch to work on the Katy line.
We sat quietly in awe as the train finally rounded the bend with its whistle blowing. It tore along the tracks vibrating the steps we sat on and our entire house. We waved at the engineer as the engine roared past; then we could see nothing other than the boxcars, flat cars, which dashed past in a dizzying procession of colors and shapes. The smoke-belching train blocked out all other sights and sounds.
When the caboose passed, opening a fresh vision of the other side of the tracks, and the clickclack of the wheels and the sound of the whistle diminished into the distance, we dashed to the rails to find our waiting coins, now pressed into even flatter disks of metal. Some were turned down at the edges or pieces had been cut away by the wheels, but like the landscape, they were reborn larger than before and clean and new.
"Look, Mama," I said as I rushed in to show her the big shiny penny.
Knowing that the lady on a dime was prettier than the man with the beard on the penny, I asked," Can I have a dime next time ?"
"No, honey," Mama laughed," you can't do that; they're worth too much. A dime is silver."
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online