On Time

54

CHAPTER 1

A new sun pried the lid off another blue-collar, Windy City, day. Rising in orbit over the smoky industrial wasteland, it scorched a dank veil from one more late summer dawn, revealing a dingy train yard and the lone man walking toward it.

He was Joe Graczyk. Lifelong resident of the encompassing town named Mayhew, today was Joe’s 35th anniversary as a railroader. Any significance, though, was lost to him. He might not have remembered at all, if wife, Sarah, hadn’t proudly done so on his behalf, when rising.

Joe mulled the numbers as he walked. Thirty-five years. Three and one-half decades. A decent run, yeah. But, should it add up to something more than just figures?

Once upon a time, maybe it had. There’d been a quarter century milestone in an engraved watch. One that arrived aboard a hot load of wartime freight; freight Joe had then gone on to set a company speed record with, in its delivery to awaiting military cargo ships. The watch, he still carried today. Its spirit though, was gone, part of a lost world; a faded realm of deference and teamwork and purpose. Not this new place called home.

The sturdy middle-ager gave his head a clearing snap and his pocketed silver dollar a lucky pat. You sorry peasant. Are you going sappy as well as superstitious? It’s 1955 Chicago, not make-believe Hollywood. Happily ever after stuff doesn’t happen in your worker bee world. Just whatever might drift ashore. Here, you do your job, tend your family, and pay your bills. Nothing more. So, get real.

Simple as it was, that modest home front canon did still offer Joe a sense of pride. Though not much hope for any kind of legacy. Wife Sarah was as solid of a family foundation that any man could hope to build on; a rock through all the lean and tough times, including the long-ago loss of one child at birth and more recently, another torn to pieces on a godforsaken Korean battle field - leaving them with only Jim.

Joe directed his attention up a steep run of weathered steps. They led to the town’s elevated freight yard - his workplace. Until now, an early edition, Chicago newspaper had ridden silently in his hip pocket. But, with Joe’s brisk ascent it came to life, whispering a quick-time cadence against the ancient and much dented lunch pail slung low in his grasp.

The rhythm died with Joe’s arrival on the summit. And so did all his pointless conjecture. He was back amid the laborer’s universe of busted knuckles and demanding machines that he understood and it immediately grounded the man. This was the Mayhew freight classification yard. Part of the Chicago, Cahokia, and Southern Railroad, it was his anointed work arena, an elemental, sworn, personal trust.

Joe followed daily protocol, firing a crisp military salute toward the yard’s control tower. Behind its array of grime streaked windows was longtime friend and yard master, Maynard Boots Conroy. The yard’s loyal scheduler, Boots hoisted his never-washed mug of sunrise coffee in return.

Joe spared a moment’s consideration of the still vacant traffic manager office directly below Boots. He then thumbed the brim of his pleated work cap a notch higher and began a jealous survey of the snarled trackage spread before him. The work and precision required here was demanding and the man had no tolerance for any slackers who didn’t meet his exacting performance standards.

Joe especially scrutinized the yard’s departure tracks. Setting packed with freight cars linked in outbound trains, they also contained the meager efforts of his night shift, switchman-son. Joe graded this result as passable.

Mounting shop rumors of manpower cutbacks and rail yard consolidations to the contrary, postwar output of this railroad remained solid. Even the clutch of recent automotive and mining strikes had done it no visible harm.

A slow moving coal-drag now punctuated that truth. Appearing as though on cue, it paraded regally before Joe, snaking its many hopper carloads of ebony stoker chunks through the yard and downtown.

Here was another steam powered shipment of the thirty million bituminous tons dug yearly from his employer’s own, downstate mines. This batch was headed for the voracious Con-Ed power plants. Supplying electricity for Joe’s own neighborhood and a good chunk of the Great Lakes region, that ironically included power provided for the man’s personal enemy, the mammoth, Electric Engine, diesel locomotive shops of nearby Stafford.

Though the congested yard blocked his further line of sight, Joe could tell by ear, that exactly five road steamers had weathered overnight at Mayhew’s roundhouse. He cataloged their waking medley as they were coaxed toward the awaiting ready track and heard nothing of concern among their distinct, throat clearing coughs. Still, the respirations of one particular machine did catch his attention.

An explosion of beating wings shattered Joe’s audit. His eyes shot skyward with them, tracking a flurry of motion toward the brightening heavens.

It was merely a flock of mongrel city pigeons. Known locally as commons, they were on early morning patrol, searching out any wheat or corn spills among a string of newly arrived grain cars; just one of a thousand such flocks spread between big city rail yards. Yet, moving in a unit, the birds cut military-precise arcs as they wheeled and turned. Their coordinated maneuvers lit the vulcanized flesh of Joe’s face with a rare, evocative smile and he paused to recall a bygone coop and beloved birds of his own.

Joe continued for the nearby crew building. A grimy archway simply stenciled, TRAINMEN, led the engineer to a musty, old locker room. There, a single light bulb dangled, illuminating the typical earmarks of its all-male realm.

The place was slathered in a hefty coat of decade-old, green enamel paint. It was dusted in soot and marred with the smudged palm prints of a million dirty work gloves braced about, while legions of workers had shaken down cinder filled, incoming pant cuffs or gave slack, outgoing boot laces a final tug.

A liberal ration of cigarette butts, errant leaves, and brittle insect shells were scattered about the floor. Higher up, hung the usual wall adornments, with the holly-trimmed, December page of an old girlie calendar dominating the room’s disintegrating bulletin board.

The tart’s holiday colors were long faded from their lengthy stay in the sooty environment. Still, her impish smile and sculpted bosom remained, brandished proudly. Remnants of even older, mostly decayed posters and notices hung about her in crumbling bits and pieces that no one cared to pluck away.

Joe unlatched a familiar locker and plopped on the bench set at mid-room. Out came the set of stout coveralls hung within. A quick inspection marked this as their last ride. Then, his Sarah would need to again work her heavy-duty laundering magic on the sturdy gabardine. But, for the time being, he could only offer the work-stiffened fabric a couple limbering stretches as he climbed inside.

Lunch pail again in hand, Joe headed back outdoors for his final stop, the engine house. His day’s power awaited there and the yard’s old locomotive shed greeted Joe with its normal bouquet of smoldering coal fumes. He stopped at the desk of shop boss and local union steward, Domingo Sunday Guzmán.

The shorter man suppressed an eager grin as he addressed Joe in Spanish.

José! ¿Que tal? ¿Que tal?

Joe replied in turn, speaking for the first time, with a voice that was low and rich.

Sunday.

By virtue of their tough-hided work world, nicknames were a convenient, if sometimes, harsh reality for railroaders and handles like, Stinky, Lard Ass, Three Fingers, and Numb-Nuts, were callously branded on its members.

Guzmán’s alias was harmless and practical, a Spanish translation for the Lord’s Day. But with seniority number 5728, a nom-de-rail had always been only some version of his proper name - Joe - hardworking, honest, reliable, Joe. Once upon a time, it’d been a more rakish, Smokin’ Joe. But that was long ago and best left in his forgotten, high speed past.

The engineer dragged over a sign-in book. He moistened a pencil tip with his tongue and began entering the usual record keeping data. Date, time, and surname, Graczyk (Graws-yeck) filled the same lines as they had each day in the string of decades since Joe’d hired on.

The pencil was lost in the mitt of his hand as Joe wrote. A hand that also scorned any hint of a wrist, welded instead, to a thickly corded forearm and its faded blue swirl of a Marine Corps tattoo.

Done writing, Joe again considered the distant yard tower and its still vacant, first floor cubicle.

That empty bottom spot just ain’t the same without old Alex. He was one good man.

Sunday joined in the appraisal.

Sure was.

I’d want it the same way, though. Drop over and be done. No lying around and suffering crap. Just get your ticket punched and check out.

He left a big hole here.

I’ll say.

Sunday reeled in his gaze

Maybe not for much longer. Boots heard something yesterday. Sounds like they’re sending a temporary guy up from the southern district.

Awfully generous of them.

Yeah. Supposed to get here soon.

Joe considered and dismissed the notion.

Southern district, huh? Well, don’t matter who they send from where. No outsider could ever fill Alex’s shoes.

Not a chance.

Joe paused to study the other man.

Temporary?

Sunday blinked.

The word you used.

"Ah, yeah. Temporary. That’s what they said."

So, why go temporary with an outsider? They could just give it full time to somebody local and solid, like Boots, right now. He’s pretty much been doing it all along anyway.

Front office must not think much of us grade school flunkies anymore.

The pair went silent to a greater implication and one bit of rumor mill gossip that’d actually panned out.

Official word had come down of the unthinkable. The first of longtime Windy City meat packers was pulling up stakes; leaving its perennial stockyards site for a more dispersed base of operations. The move was made possible by a combined advent of the new interstate highway system and the unveiling of self-cooling tractor-trailers - both of which held an ill omen for legions of dependent Chicago railroad men.

Joe tapped his lucky coin pocket a second time that day.

Aw, probably don’t mean crap. My crew all signed in?

Yep.

He motioned to an idle locomotive resting inside.

What’s with 1841? Thought I’d have it today.

Sunday’s earlier grin returned.

You would’ve. But it’s sidelined with a sticky throttle.

Joe tediously swung the power roster back about.

Okay. So, what leaky slop bucket did I draw, instead?

But scanning his assigned engine number, the man’s eyes tightened in disbelief.

"2982 - my old Berk? No way! It’s still around?"

Sunday’s smile widened, swinging a thumb at the door.

Only one way to find out, José. Go see for yourself; middle of the pack, by the turntable.

Joe rocked back in wonder.

No kidding. Some good news for a change. But, why this far north? And hauling a local, to boot?

Came in last night, said the hostler. Part of a power shuffle meant for hydrostatic tests. In the meantime, I didn’t think you’d mind working with an old friend.

Joe shared the other man’s grin and started outside.

Not at all. Not at all.

He checked his Hamilton Railway Special against the master shop clock in leaving. As it’d been for decades, the open-faced timepiece was still, dead on. Its precision movement was an expensive investment needed by all trainmen of his day and one which’d set Joe, as a new worker, back nearly a month’s advanced pay. Though treated properly, they kept their owners on time and safe, reliably lasting an engineer his entire career. Most were then handed off in proud tradition to new generation road men within the same families - a custom Joe felt little prospect of continuing in his own.

As the highest seniority man in the road’s subdivision, Joe had his choice of jobs and eight years ago had swapped his long haul service for the weekday turn-around. This amounted to trading loads among the trackside industries of a familiar, 100 mile round trip. It brought him home each night and generally gave him weekends off. Though today was no different than any other in that regard, the man felt a new spring in his step, which only comes when someone renews a favored acquaintance.

And not far off, his waited.

CHAPTER 2

Its surname was Berkshire, its model designation, Series-S. From track to stack, those of its kind stood a statuesque 15 feet, 8 inches tall and were the consummate product of masterful design and practical application - elegance and power.

Joe respected Mikado, Pacific, and Hudson-styled road engines and considered each handsome in their own right. But, whether screaming across the open prairie or merely setting still, to him, nothing did it with more splendor than the 2-8-4 wheel arrangement of a Berkshire locomotive.

Engine 2982 had been born and bred at the Lima Locomotive Works in northwestern Ohio. It’d been broken to harness in the early days of World War II, its youth spent rushing wartime commodities along mainline trackage, slaving to halt the Axis Powers in their maniacal plan of world control.

Traditionally, major hubs got all the new engines, with lowly satellite spots like Mayhew, perennially living on their hand-me-downs. So, a brand-new machine’s appearance here had been a rare one. 2982’s was even more so, considering that at that time, the federal War Production Board maintained priority approval for creation of all new power allotments. And, with the massive steel needs for warship building alone, only a trickle of new locomotive construction was being authorized.

There’d been the brief, photographic ritual of newly arrived 2982, surrounded by a gaggle of no-name downtown dignitaries - PR silage meant for the headquarters’ scrapbook. So, it set draped in celebratory bunting, patiently waiting out the camera snapping and VIPs, who vanished as quickly as they’d arrived. Then, only in the company of its true handlers, off came the makeup and engine 2982 was just another working girl needing to earn her keep.

But earn it, she did.

Every military good imaginable was hauled by the locomotive. One trip might be a few million gallons of high-test aviation gas from the Whiting refineries. The next, an equal ration of coal for heating the ravenous blast furnaces of nearby Gary and East Chicago. With myriad armament, munitions, and personnel transported in between, 2982 lugged materiel by the metric ton and servicemen in the many thousands. Through blistering summer days and bone grating winter nights it faced high traffic demands and low maintenance miles without ever failing in its task.

For Joe, the even-tempered steamer additionally held some personal elements. As the first brand new engine he’d ever manned, 2982 certainly claimed a special place in his heart. He’d referred to it as his best girl and early on, nicknamed it Baby, after a favored ragtime tune of years before.

But, its timely appearance had also filled a greater role for the man, as something of a much-needed grief counselor. In that regard 2982 represented a clean slate and fresh start, helping Joe manage the searing pain of a tragic accident just the year prior and all those poor kids he’d left dead on that remote spot of lower state trackage.

As things often go, 2982 had eventually been reassigned to a far-off district. Man and machine were put out of touch. Now though, was a time of long overdue reunion. Eleven years later, Joe happily rounded the last corner, turning onto the ready-track and his awaiting, Baby.

Finally seeing it, the man came up short. His smile dimmed and his pace slowed. Even from a distance, it was obvious that the time since had been tough. Like him, its glory days were now behind. And like Joe, 2982 was tired.

The neglected soot of a thousand fires hung as a filthy shawl across the steamer’s broad, sun-blistered back. It was streaked in a gritty, white mantle of leaked traction sand and water treatment salts that ringed it like streams of long dried sweat.

A shiny ooze of fresh oil leaks girdled its cylinder packings. Assorted greases and road grime clung low in belly-wide, disrespectful clumps. The engine’s mighty driving wheels were grooved with the wear of too many hard miles and worse, rusty firebox bolts gave witness to life threatening, water jacket seepage.

For the second time today, Joe steeled himself to blunt reality. Here was just another pitiful sign of changing times - a once, grand dame of the high iron spending her twilight service downgraded from time-critical freight to his kind of sleepwalking existence. The man’s frail moment of joy withered. His hopeful reunion became more a meeting of new age orphans.

Yet, even in Baby’s neglected state, Joe found a lingering touch of solace. His weather-beaten beauty still commanded the handsome lines of its thoroughbred origins. And the machine itself, seemed unaffected by that same neglect, instead, almost wearing it proudly, as though a hard-earned badge of honor. Even at this late point in its career, the old Berk appeared only concerned with making its next run.

The engine number boards gave an impression of coming erect at Joe’s approach. Like ears gone on full alert, they keened to the familiar steps of a long absent man who had first held its reins, remembering well that his touch was a gentle one.

Arrived beside, Joe set a callused hand to the haggard iron horse. He spoke, stroking it with a favored caress.

Hello, old girl.

His hand lingered for a moment. Then, it was time for business. Joe slid on a pair of heavy leather, gauntlet work gloves and began a normal, predeparture, walk-around.

The engineer’s veteran eyes scanned and graded his machine’s interlocked array of drive rods, valve gear, levers, pumps, and assorted linkages. He inspected all the wheel castings with their sweated steel tires for damage. No bolt, bar, bushing, or brace escaped him. A quick listen to the whisper of barely lifting safety valves high above satisfied the man.

Joe next hoisted himself into the engine cab. Securing his battered lunch pail low, beside his hard, right hand seat, he scouted the cabalistic maze of unlabeled hand valves, levers, and lanyards ranged about.

The locomotive’s nerve center ranged from floor to ceiling. It was a realm of black-bag controls, understood solely by an esoteric fraternity, who, only through an extensive and demanding apprenticeship, had earned the right to handle such beasts. To Joe Graczyk, though, this spot was comfortable as an old shoe.

The engineer rapped his finger against a steam pressure gauge and verified its dictated psi rating. He next opened the valves of twin sight glasses to confirm the machine’s water level. Existing droplets told Joe that his fireman had already checked their accuracy. But, as part of normal procedure, Joe repeated the test, confirming things with the safety-dictated second opinion.

He stomped the engine’s firebox floor treadle and swung wide its butterfly doors. A dead-level blaze shimmered within. It had a good heel tucked in the back corners and was formed in a textbook perfect and even burning, horseshoe pattern. Possessing an eye capable of separating such a 2000-degree inferno into its individual components of air, fuel, and fire, Joe again, was satisfied.

The sweet, low sulfur coal from the road’s own downstate mines was burning bright. Just enough blower was dialed in, to keep sapphire-blue highlights skittering across the iridescent pyre, and on their way through the 80-foot-long maze of fire tubes and superheaters. Leisurely exiting its distant stack, the resting locomotive’s exhaust was the perfect, graphite shade of a Ringelmann smoke grading chart.

Even considering the Berk’s long deferred general maintenance, Sunday’s roundhouse boys had done their usual, fine, on-the-spot prep work. The quarter-time pulse of its compound air pumps was a confident heartbeat as Joe awaited his fireman, Vinton Cougler.

Vint was a transplanted downstate boy, the youngest and only non-Slavic member of Joe’s otherwise totally East European-bred crew. Carrying an honorary nickname of, Vint-ski by his associates, he was a hard worker and had become a valued crewman. But, he would shortly be ending his stint as a road engine trainee. As soon as a mainline job opened somewhere, the young man would be moving on, to a reward of better things, as he should. Joe would miss him, wondering who might be his replacement, while knowing surely, who would not.

Rail lean Vint now returned from a check of their tender’s coal and water stores. He tossed the engine’s wheel chock chains onto the rear floor apron, agilely following.

Mornin’ Joebie!

Joe removed the throttle’s lock pin, looking over.

All set, Vintski?

The fireman affirmed his fuel feed controls and offered a raised thumb.

Yes sir! Let ‘er rip!

Joe first checked for any trackside pedestrians, then opened the engine’s blow down valve. A quick gush of scalding water sprayed from deep in its bowels and with it, any heat-stealing sludge that might’ve settled low in the boiler’s water jacket.

Cylinder petcocks were next opened, venting its chilled valves and pistons to a bath of fresh, warming steam. Things were now set for movement.

Joe turned on the engine bell and swept its brake handle aside. Adding a couple sharp whistle blasts, he announced his intended travel for the departure track and awaiting train. He nudged the reverse lever, slowly feeding throttle, while tickling the wheel sanders for additional starting traction.

There was that familiar, brief moment of pause, while the laws of thermodynamics and physics sorted themselves out. Then, like an obedient pachyderm, the 800-ton engine leaned ahead. It gave a determined yawn of its stack, and began toward a line of freight cars and Joe’s remaining crew.

Roman Spike Jackowniak stood beside a thrown yard switch, reversing the engine for its train. The barrel-chested head brakeman had their day’s flimsies tucked in his shirt pocket. They were work order copies, given over by the train’s conductor, Karol Pappy Cielczska, now situated in his distant caboose-office.

Spike swept a practiced foot atop the engine’s low-hung stirrup and latched onto its grab irons. He remained there for a short ride to the first car in line, then hopped down from the slowing engine, staying clear as he motioned Joe backward.

After a gentle linking of couplers, Spike hiked up his pants and adjusted the rectangular buckle of a much worn military belt looping them. He swung a broad arc of arm toward the engine tender and first car, indicating his hazardous intention of stepping between to connect their thick air hoses.

Splinters of light flashed from the belt’s work scarred buckle as Spike moved about and Joe grinned in irony. It reinforced one of the few things he could yet count on in these frustrating times; that this business of railroading was an occupation which reduced everything to its simplest denominator. No vanity or posturing was to be found here. Even wartime relics could wind up simply being items put to practical use.

In the case of Spike’s belt, it was an old, enemy uniform souvenir. Brought back by the man’s nephew after VE Day, its broad, formerly noble leather, was cracked and frayed and stained from work-a-day use. The large, distinctively stamped buckle and once-proud, Gott Mitt Uns slogan of a deposed warrior race was now simply a handy clasp for a lowly railroader’s grimy work drawers. (And one worn disrespectfully askew to avoid pinching his ample peacetime girth.)

Spike returned to the locomotive, again shifting the belt buckle aside to thrust his hefty frame inside the cab. He plopped heavily on the engine’s jump seat, snapping a nickel cigar in half with his large, square teeth. Starting his day’s first chaw, he handed Joe the work orders.

Mornin’ gents. Thirty-eight cars; thirteen and ninety-two tons. Regular set outs. All tied in, Joe.

Graczyk spoke a quick thanks in Polish.

Dziekuje.

Prosze bardzo. Replied Spike, in kind.

Joe stuffed the orders in his coveralls and spun backwards, for a better look at the train’s rear brakeman, Zygmunt Kopczak. Ziggy stood there offering his distant signal for an air test, which Joe obeyed. He swung the cab lever to its full-service position, immediately ramping-up 2982’s compressors. A quick gush of wind raced out to plug any gaps in the brake line plumbing of Joe’s three-million-pound train.

In a few minutes the pumps slowed, indicating full system pressure. Joe verified it at a steady 90 psi from his end and a release brakes signal from Ziggy concurred at the other.

Again nursing the reverse lever, Joe now ran in his train’s slack. This action slightly bunched the cars, so when starting ahead, the locomotive would essentially move each one separately, minimizing the strain of getting under way.

Joe gave the whistle rope another double-tug and gently fed his engine some throttle. A fleeing chorus of rumbling drawbars verified every set of locked car couplers trailing behind. Scrutinizing the boiler sight glass, he evenly applied more power. This worked to prevent any rearward surging of boiler water, which might lighten the drive wheels’ adhesion to their rails, causing the engine to stumble and tear fire-chilling holes in Vint’s dead-level blaze.

The mission of a competent engine driver was to coax the best performance from any locomotive in his company’s stable without being a pounder, one of those indifferent operators who callously abused machines placed in their care. And Joe Graczyk ranked among the elite.

He was blessed with an operator’s instinct for translating the drone of a working engine into a pulse of its component sounds. He could itemize and grade the furious high iron medley of hammering drive gear and thundering exhaust, never failing to get the best possible blend of both performance and economy from any iron horse placed in his trust.

Such was the case again, today. Up to that moment Joe had his machine tiptoeing along at a proper, dead-slow, yard speed limit. But, with the departure track set and the signal board giving him a hearty green light, he began feeding his locomotive more power. The mighty Berkshire willingly complied, shouldering its many tons of freight without complaint.

Clearing the crossover, Joe flicked his reins firmer yet. 2982 now sensed the open road and leaned eagerly into its harness. A rhythm of deep, super-heated snorts filled the air and had the proud driver humming a favored old tune in praise.

Yes sir, that’s my baby. No sir, I don’t mean maybe.

Joe Graczyk’s workday had begun.

CHAPTER 3

The 1950s world was ramping up and America was a land in transition. Its long running Industrial Age was slowly cresting. Its new Space Age, slowly being born.

The formal postwar occupation of Japan was concluding, with a parting of old enemies turned into new friends. The first rumblings of something called rock-n-roll was stirring the airwaves and an amusement park of unheralded scope had recently opened in Southern California.

Today, a loaf of bread cost fifteen cents, with gasoline pushing a quarter-dollar per gallon. Even so, a recent market survey predicted that with the newly raised U.S. minimum wage set at seventy-five cents an hour, a whopping 80 percent of all American families would soon own an automobile.

Reading that trend, a hopeful German carmaker was daringly exporting its first peacetime products to America. But the few thousand comically hunchbacked contraptions they called Beetles, were seen in U.S. carmaker boardrooms only as a short-lived curiosity and hardly a threat to Detroit’s mighty, Big Three. Ensconced as the manufacturing muscle which had won World War II, it was absurd to think that any offshore carmaker could ever dethrone the likes of General Motors, Ford, or Chrysler!

The throwaway society spawned by commonplace plastics was also still in its embryonic stages. But, a practical transistor had recently been born of an early synthetic resin. Shortly, it would make its humble public début and unseat the cumbersome vacuum tube. Armed with such instant-on compactness, neophyte electronics industries would soar to magical heights. The fledgling school of astroscience could now begin suffering through the many miscarriages and birthing pains that would ultimately put men on the moon and microwave ovens in every house.

Closer to home, things around the Great Lakes were also germinating. In Chicago, Cook County Clerk, Richard J. Daley had won his first mayoral race, setting in motion a generation long, iron-fisted political dynasty over, The City of Big Shoulders. A little further west, nearby Des Plaines was unveiling a radical concept of quick service dining that came with a pair of golden arches.

Although it would be nearly another decade before ground would break for the first true malls, blueprints for shopping plazas were currently being laid in the eager hands of building contractors, so starting the determined march of trademarked chain stores across the landscape and setting in motion the death knell for leagues of honorable mom-n-pop shops.

But, for the time being, Mayhew neighborhood constants, like Poulson’s corner grocery and Walkowiak’s Hardware & Appliance, were still firmly entrenched, conducting the same brisk walk-in business as they had for decades. And a solid patron to all local commerce was this town’s railroad.

The heavily worked tracks of the Chicago, Cahokia, and Southern Railway slashed like a raw saber cut, through the town’s vitals. Its elevated twin mainlines and dozen assorted sidings amounting to well-polished, life-giving, steel arteries. And here, as part of its 300-mile-long Prairie Division, was the Mayhew satellite freight yard.

Fondly known as the, Crippled, Constipated, and Stubborn to its workers, the road was branded across the upper Midwest in the shape of a capital letter T, with outstretched arms that braced against Iowa and Indiana. A mighty taproot ran straight south, dragging along a mesh of supporting capillaries, that nicked western Kentucky and Tennessee, before wandering about the Arkansas and Mississippi state lines.

Claiming only 1800 miles of track with 250 locomotives, and 7000 employees, the CC&S was small for a Class 1 railroad, mirroring rather, the subdivision of some larger, transcontinental player. Yet, it was the equal of any Midwestern pike and had faithfully employed many local men for a century. Television was still a relatively new commodity in Mayhew. But, the railroad was a trusted, old friend.

Just as the members of tribal bloodlines are decreed to follow clan totems, so a railroading life appeared destined for Jim Graczyk. The yard smoke and cinders wafting down his 54th Street home had early on, sprinkled his pregnant mother Sarah, like a sorcerer’s magic dust, ordaining both his and older brother Mike’s place, in the future role call of CC&S trainmen. Nursery rhymes sung to the youngsters were laced with tales of choo-choo trains and the boys recognized nearby whistle talk of jockeying steamers while still only tykes, reinforcing the tradition.

But Jim, as the youngest of the Graczyk brothers, was slender and lithe, with the tranquil green eyes of his mother and a gentleness in features that set him apart from the chiseled visage of older brother, Mike, or father, Joe. And although Jim had certainly been born into a railroading family, there too, he was set apart.

Today, the young man was returning from uptown Mayhew on foot. By now, most local families owned a car. Yet, with the array of neighborhood businesses placed in easy walking distance, sidewalk traffic was still common and Jim finished the last few blocks of his return home, before making ready for his afternoon switchman’s job.

That morning had been a pleasant time for a walk. The scorching weather was giving way to a more accommodating Indian summer, bringing a sweet taste of coming fall. But, Jim’s easy stroll took a dim turn in rounding the next corner.

There, he spied her, the pretty young widow, tending her baby in a small park. She was smartly attired, as though a businesswoman on her lunch hour. And though her white blouse and navy blue skirt were a bit out of place among the smattering of casually dressed elderly, otherwise peopling the place, on her, the dress code was