Showing posts with label trains. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trains. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

End Of The Line...

Everyone has their stories, their memories of days gone by. Times, when life was at such a high pitch, then it all came to an end. That's our existence, but that's just the way it is... unfortunately!  I guess we can say that  for all things. They come and they go. They serve their purpose, then it's over.
 Walking in our local park the other day, I stood looking at the old locomotive; just sitting there; looking so forlorn and lost. It made it last run long ago, but one can only imagine the days and nights it raced back and forth, doing what it was designed for. The hot fires in the boiler, the massive amounts of smoke that billowed from it's stack...
I bet, IF it could talk, it would have lots of tales to tell; of the many people it carried to their destinations; Most ordinary, but maybe some famous,  EVEN some infamous, outlaws. During this train's time, it was still the wild west(as it was called)... Who knows for sure? Now, it's work is done, but still I have to wonder(crazy me) if trains have ghosts? If so, I'm sure somewhere this old giant, fire  roaring in it's boiler, the engineer with his hand on the throttle, is burning up the line. Out across the open desert, it's whistle screaming at every crossing...Going somewhere...

Sunday, July 7, 2013

JERKWATER TOWN...

I, like a lot of people, grew up in a small town and had often heard it referred to as 'A jerkwater town'...
I really never gave it much thought, till I got older and started questioning life in general. Then, I had to ask...WHY is it called a JERKWATER town? Where did that term ever come from? What did it mean?

As I discovered, the jerkwater part didn't apply to where I was from because the Railroad didn't come near us.  I find out that was an old term for towns, with a JERKWATER tank, where the old steam trains use to stop and fill their tanks...
The trains would make a brief stop, let off or pick up passengers, and drop the JERKWATER spout to refill their tanks for the next leg of the journey across country. I have no idea what sort of mileage they got on one tank, but there was always another 'JERKWATER TOWN' on down the line...

Somehow, over the years, the term got attached to just about ANY small town that wasn't on the map or nobody had ever heard of...EXCEPT the people living there...