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I can recall many Christmases, but one in particular stands out. I was seven years old. My dad had a defense job with the Cotton Belt Railroad. We were living in southeast Missouri, near the Mississippi River. The little town was built around the railroad, and we lived near the switching yard and roundhouse. I loved to go with him down to the yards, and got to go in the roundhouse where locomotives were maintained and repaired. That would not be possible today because of OSHA and insurance regulations, but I had the run of the place.
Railroad employee training took place in passenger coaches that had been converted to classrooms with many hands-on models of equipment. At age seven, I had the unique experience of having the Walsheart’s Valve Gear and other complex operating systems explained to me, while being allowed to crank beautiful cutaway brass models of the models. One of them is in this short video:
And that, my friends, is how a steam locomotive turns water into motive power. The wheels on each side are offset 90o, allowing the locomotive to go into reverse by throwing the Johnson Bar. Even at age seven, I knew a lot about trains.
My dad had a freight run on Christmas Day that year, so I was upset we could not have him home for Christmas. It was two or three days before Christmas, and we were having our “Christmas Dinner” early. Late in the evening, we were gathered around our little dining table in the tiny rented house for turkey, dressing and all the usual holiday fare. My mother was a wonderful cook.
Part way through the meal, I heard what sounded like footsteps on the roof. Then there was the sound of scraping coming from directly over my head. I wanted to run outside to find out what it was, but my parents shushed me, saying it was probably nothing, and to stay seated.
When I was a kid, you did NOT get up from the table without (1) finishing your meal, or (2) without permission.
We finished the meal, and after I helped my mother clear the table, we went into the living room.
SANTA HAD BEEN THERE!!
My dad explained that he wrote to Santa, telling him about having to be gone for Christmas. Santa accommodated us by coming early.
My first electric train was set up to run in a circle around the Christmas tree. It was an American Flyer freight train with about five freight cars. Box car, oil tanker, flat car, and a gondola car. With a red caboose, of course. The locomotive was a little 2-4-2, similar to one of the switch engines my dad operated sometimes. Steam of course. At that time during WW2, all locomotives were coal fired steam. I had never seen a diesel locomotive.
This is an American Flyer train set from that era:
I miss my parents. My mother’s cooking and kindness, my dad’s brilliant steel-trap mind, and his desire for all us kids to learn as much about everything as we could.
These are my parents as I remember them from my childhood.
The city where my parents lived out the last years of their lives has a little park a block from their house. Lo and behold, they set up one of the old steam locomotives in the park. On one of my visits home in the early 1970s, we went down to the old engine and I took his picture sitting on the same seat where he sat during WW2.
Christmas is not Christmas without a bit of music. I am partial to bagpipes, so this is special to me.
Fr. Tim has asked me to play Silent Night on my mountain dulcimer for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Here is how it sounds on an Appalachian mountain dulcimer.
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