Steel Monsters
By Ada Brownell
When I was a kid,
the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad’s main line lay between me and
school. No crossing arms barred me from danger--just noisy clanging and big red
eyeballs flashing. Then every hoof of the massive engine’s horsepower pounded
by.
I hated trains. Somebody
told me if you stand too close, you’ll be sucked under.
Then I grew up. An
agent-telegrapher chose me for his wife and I made friends with the monsters.
Les’s job caused us to roam Colorado like the trains, and we moved 12 times the
first three years of our marriage. But it was an adventure.
We lived in a log
cabin at Pando, on top of Colorado’s Tennessee Pass across the highway from
Camp Hale. One soldier jumped off the train with his duffle bag and checked out
the place.
“Mountains this
way. Mountains that way. Mountains over there and over here. The only way out
of this place is up!”
When we moved to
Minturn, our house rested in a mountain’s niche above the depot. Les worked
evenings, so near suppertime I grabbed a sled, hiked up the canyon, slid all
the way to the depot and delivered his meal.
In Malta, a
smelter town near Leadville, Colo., a boxcar with a “lean-to” became our home. Relatives
visited overnight and after lights were out, my little niece shakily asked, “Is
a train going to take us away?”
In Avon, Colo., we
lived in the depot next to the tracks. Often the click of the telegraph “bug”
echoed into our living room carrying a message in dots and dashes. I knew trains
probably approached from the East and West on the one set of tracks. Les
quickly transcribed the Morse message, tied it in twine, attached it to a long
Y stick, and ran outside.
A few minutes
later, a massive monster clothed in the gold and black Rio Grande cape streaked
toward the depot. Les stood beside the tracks, his clothes flapping in the
breeze as he extended the Y stick.
The engineer
leaned out, stuck his arm through the loop of twine, read the message and
pulled the train into the next siding.
Finally, we bought a beautiful mobile home. A
40-foot canvas awning covered our patio.
We were not far
from the tracks and one day sparks from a “hot box”, a boxcar with a stuck
wheel, ignited a nearby trestle bridge. Sparks from the fire burned a hole in
our awning, but more serious, train traffic stopped until the trestle was
rebuilt.
Our mobile house
ended up in two-mile-high Leadville and winter snows showed no mercy. Before
Les left for a temporary job in Texas creek, he said, “Leave the bathtub water
running to prevent freezing.”
One frosty night,
I took a relaxing bath. I was tucked in bed when my mother-in-law, who lived
with us, flushed the toilet. I woke to a sucking sound and remembered I turned
the water off.
Fearing broken
pipes, I threw my fake-fur coat over my nightie, pulled on snow boots, grabbed
a fusee-torch, matches, a broom and ventured into the darkness.
I swept a path,
then a tunnel through the deep snow and crawled to the pipes.
Bummer! I got the matches wet!
I backed out and headed for the door. My
bare hand stuck to the frosty knob. When I got my hand free, the door wouldn’t
open. The deep snow on the roof was melting, dribbled down, and the door froze
shut.
I rang the doorbell and prayed. My mother-in-law pushed
and I pulled until with a crunch the door opened.
Next time, I dressed warmly, left the door
open a crack, kept my matches dry and succeeded in my mission. The next day, I
discovered the temperature dipped to 30 degrees below zero.
Soon Centralized
Traffic Control closed many depots. Teletype and later, computers, nudged
telegraph into history.
But still the
monsters crawl over our nation, bringing food, fuel and merchandise. I hope the
handsome monsters never become extinct.
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