Memoir Meets Philosophy?

Now and then I do wax philosophical. Maybe this essay is at least somewhat in that direction. As usual I share it for what its worth. Readers can decide for themselves! BTW this is post number 294 on this blog. I will try to plan something special for the three hundredth since that feels like quite a milestone! And we will get there in just a few more days.

Growing Up on a Bridge

Those of us who came into this life in the middle of the twentieth century were blessed—or condemned—to live on a bridge between “the old days” and today. In 1940 something or the early 1950s, we thought ourselves very modern and fortunate to live in the wonderful twentieth century.

As small kids we might not yet have had television in our homes, but we had a radio that brought us the magic of words, news, wonderful and varied music and drama from the vast world. We had electric lights and refrigerators and automobiles that were getting faster and more luxurious every year. And there was even air travel as well as trains and busses. What a life!

Then as we began to grow up, the days of TV sitcoms with the perfect family, parents who slept in twin beds, the picket fence, two-point-five kids and a spotty dog morphed into the turbulent 1960s. It was the time of hippies, protests, Vietnam, Woodstock, the Black Panthers, women’s lib and acid rock. By now TV was everywhere, in color even, and our cars got faster and higher powered each year. Zero to sixty five in… And our music became louder, more strident and very much tied to electronics. We had crossed the first bridge in our coming of age.

Then more decades came and went, bringing more changes. We put satellites into orbit, a man on the moon, more and faster communications. The Berlin wall came down and Cosmopolitan magazine had nude male centerfolds! Cuss words became a feature in movies and song lyrics. We watched our kids begin to grow up, much more wild and rebellious than we ever were, of course. No one chanted, “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Susie with the baby carriage,” any more. That order was often transposed. Some were shocked and others said, “high time.”

Finally we burst through into a new century, surviving Y2K only to be jolted hard by 9-11. There seems an odd irony in the fact those same three digits are also the near-universal code to seek help in an emergency. Just dial 9-1-1. That day it would not have helped much.

In a couple of decades we went from “computers” which filled a warehouse sized space to an equivalent amount of power and capability in the palm of our hands. We came through talking on cell phones and doing email to texting, tweeting and twerking—no, wait; that is some kind of a dance but I guess communicating in a way, too.

So here we are, aging “baby boomers” who have lived our lives on a bridge between “ancient history” and the future. Changes came in increasing numbers, sometimes in almost the blink of an eye. Change and progress—yes, progress requires change but I assert that all change is not progress—sweep past at a geometrically accelerating pace. Where do we go from here?

Do you sometimes feel you’ve been left behind in this mad dash? Maybe I am the only one but I suspect there are more of us. My maternal grandfather, who was born in the late 1800s and passed away in the late 1900s at 100 years and 10 months of age, had gone from horse and buggy to space ships, telegraph along the railroads to wireless phones. He coped as every generation must, but it seems each new group of us has to witness more change and faster change.

Perhaps I am almost ready to step off the bridge and let the rush go on without me. I am not sure how much more and new I can comprehend and adapt to. In my case, growing up in a rural part of the southwest US, I saw the tail end of the ‘old west’ in then elderly men who had been cowboys, gunfighters, mountain men, cavalry who fought Indians or like my late father–in-law commanded a troop of Buffalo Soldiers along the Mexican border during World War I. I only experienced their lives vicariously but it still seemed real and vital, not remote bookish history.

The only way to keep their stories was to write them down or use a big, cumbersome tape recorder so my recollections are not perfect. Even my own early days seem so distant now, veiled in shadowy almost-dream-like vagueness, back at the start of this bridge.

The years pass very quickly as we become mired in the daily trivia of living so that we lose so much, even while we are still here and semi-sane. It feels as if the cord of our rosary has broken and beads have slipped off and fallen away without our notice. You can’t go home again, they say. Anymore not even in memory. That tends to make me sad.

The next bridge or span will be perhaps the scariest or most marvelous yet. I am more curious than fearful and in many ways I am eager to talk again to those who have crossed ahead of me. Maybe their recollections will now be crystalline and perfect. Maybe mine will be too, once I join them. But then perhaps from that new viewpoint we will no longer feel the need or desire to look back.

Someone once said that heaven and hell might be no more than watching a ‘video’ of your life play out on a sort of screen where you must watch it, over and over…. There might be a kind of poetic justice in seeing your highs and lows, your good deeds and the harm you caused and perhaps the most cruel, having to realize how mediocre most of us really are. Already I am wishing I might have another chance to relive my three score and some, fix some of my worst boo-boos and undo some damage. But life has no rewind button, no go back arrow or delete key. It is what it is. Time only moves in one direction and we have no choice but to go along on a strange rolling walkway until it is time to step off this bridge…

 

Mom holding me in Boston
by the family car.

Me at the Inn of the
Mountain Gods, near
Ruidoso, NM 

Memoir Essay--An Allergy to Drama

This one is a little more personal and much less upbeat than most of the glimpses into the past that I choose to share. I used to be embarrassed and somewhat ashamed of what I perceived as a rare and cringe-worthy form of a "disfuntional family" before I had even heard that term. I know now after three score and some that some kind of "disfunctionality" is almost more the rule than the exception. Every family has their closet skeleton or sore spot.

So many people in my age bracket and younger have suffered in some way. Richard Bach of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and other powerful books collected and published a group of mini-essays which he titled "Thank You, Wicked Parents." I found it very powerful and moving as it set forth how many who had suffered terrible abuse and mistreatment used that to build strength and become a better person than the environment they had known.

I did not have to cope with alcoholism, drug abuse, martial infidelity or severe physical or sexual abuse; I was actually lucky. Still, I hate and shun what I call "drama" and the emotional blackmail that goes with it. Thus this essay. I hope some may find a sense that they are not alone when they read it.  Please feel free to write me at azwriter427@yahoo.com if you want to share or comment privately. I may attempt something different but parallel to Bach's effort in time. GMW

An Allergy to Drama

I suppose most families have their drama ruler, king or queen. It’s the person who manages to keep everyone stirred up, hog center stage, and manipulate events and situations constantly and continually. In my family it was my dad, absolutely and unequivocally. Once I was long away from that environment of my youth and had gained mature understanding I realized he had serious mental and emotional problems. An excuse? That I cannot say.

But he exhibited everything from bipolar disorder to paranoia, delusions—both of grandeur or importance and persecution, and other ills. He had a total inability to accept any blame for his numerous failures and mistakes. They always had to be someone else’s fault and the result of either malfeasance on their part or some wicked conspiracy “out to get” him. All of these traits worsened as he got older and more of his dreams, plans and schemes failed to pan out.

My mother was very quiet, almost mousy. To my knowledge she only told him no, I mean really no, like hell no and stomp a foot for emphasis, a very few times. When she did so, I believe he really listened but this was a most rare occurrence. Until I finally left home, I never dared to do so although I perfected silent and subtle disobedience and a kind of quiet contempt to a fine art over the years. Yet I always wanted approval and even conned myself into believing some of those schemes; he was very convincing at times.

At any rate, our family dynamic revolved totally and solely around him and whatever his latest passion, scheme or pet peeve might be. He thrived on crises and if none conveniently emerged, he was not above creating them. In fact, he did so regularly. One of his favorite rants was, “We cannot go on with business as usual!” (This is an emergency/catastrophe/life-or-death event etc. ad nauseum.) In fact, ‘business as usual” (read that as calm, orderly, quiet attending to the normal chores and tasks of daily life) was anathema to him.

He was probably addicted to the adrenaline rush of panic, crisis and code-red situations as well as at least subconsciously realizing that put him in the driver’s seat, center stage, large and in charge. It was the license to issue orders, make demands and crack at least a verbal whip over the rest of the family. He was a master at all of that.

In time I came to hate the whole lifestyle. How many holidays were ruined by one of his tantrums about some imagined emergency and inevitable need to ignore the Christmas, Easter, birthday or other very small celebration? (Small because we were always on the edge of poverty if not deep into it). To this day I really do not enjoy holidays or family get-togethers because of the long shadow this cast over them.

The trend toward drama seemed to extend to all his siblings and I suspect came from their mother who I never really knew. There were five of them. The eldest sister never married and basically retreated from life at about forty five or so and never worked again and seldom even went anywhere. The second sister was a ditsy fashionista and ‘artsy’ and had one short-lived unhappy marriage. Dad managed a forty six year marriage but only because Mom would not ever leave. The younger sister had one short though apparently happy marriage but lost her husband to a leukemia type disease very early and remained single until her two sons were grown and the elder was ill with the results of long term Type 1 diabetes. The “baby” brother had one stormy marriage that ended in serious acrimony and a string of lady friends, before, during and after that relationship. In retrospect none of them ever seemed very happy.

Once I finally got out on my own, I began a gradual but very deliberate and determined effort to avoid all forms of drama. Even when I was quite angry, fearful, upset or frustrated, I worked hard to maintain an outward appearance of calm and control. I deplored tantrums and still do although I do have a naturally violent and explosive temper. I bottle it up fiercely until I can let go in some private and undangerous way. I also absolutely despise what I call “emotional blackmail” which I consider the most cruel, vicious and destructive kind of verbal abuse.

I admit that the last few years I find myself growing more irritable and much less patient but I still strive to keep a calm and controlled demeanor and not to take my moods out on others, especially any innocent soul who has no idea what has upset me and is probably totally blameless. Mostly I manage to do so. And when I do not, I am upset with myself and strive even harder to do better. I will not be my dad or anything remotely similar!

Still, as I look around me, I am appalled at how many people either thrive on or may be addicted to “drama.” Some seem to draw it like a magnet, even while they frequently and sometimes loudly bewail their tormented and tempestuous lives and act very put upon by all the “others” who visit these calamities on them.

Observing this, I often ask, at least to myself, do they really hate it or do they stir the pot—maybe even without realizing it—because they, too, cannot abide “business as usual?” Maybe a state of tumult is business as usual for them but it gives me mental and spiritual hives! It makes my brain and soul itch like mad—and there is no way to scratch it. Like with any allergen, I try to simply avoid it and get away from that environment. If I must endure, it is a suffering I hate to experience and I escape it as soon as I can.

Memoir essay--coloring

Have I ticked everyone off yet? Politically correct is definitely not my middle name. I call them as I see them and if you are offended, you do not have to read any more or even ever visit again. I do believe in free speech, in the virtues of choice, and that no one has a right never to be offended! Mostly I try to "write nice" but there are times when I feel I need to make a statement or say something about which I feel strongly. Don't say you were not warned. I mention that every now and then.

Today though I will be nice again. Here is another little essay about the past and how I was shaped into who and what I am by decades of life and influences that began when I was very young.

Coloring—Lines Optional?

Along with the magic of the written word, the idea of coloring pictures and patterns has been a big part of my life since very early childhood. The ritual of reading me a bedtime story—or very often some bedtime verses-- goes back to my earliest memories. I had a couple of favorite books. One was A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. I loved those poems! Actually I still do.  The other, perhaps even more favored for a reason I will explain in a moment, was a big book of Mother Goose Rhymes.

            The neat thing about it was that almost every page had a line drawing to illustrate one of the verses.  They featured women in the “Gibson Girl” styles and children in turn of the century garb (19th, not 20th) and cartoonish creatures that were really not at all ridiculous. Part of the ritual was watching mom or dad color one of those drawings. My dad always had a good set of colored pencils. Though not an engineer, he did do a lot of schematics and laid out plans for many of his projects. For a long time I could not do the actual coloring but it was fun to watch a drawing somehow come to life with colors.

            Before long I had crayons and coloring books of my own. At first I did not do a very neat job but my coordination quickly improved and I learned to stay inside the lines, at least most of the time.  Before I reached my teens I was doing a lot of drawing myself and also making paper dolls, a hobby that I kept for many years. I had been started on this activity by one of my few baby sitters. I later grew dissatisfied with the “Kewpie doll” figures she had made and learned to draw girls and guys in proper eight heads high proportions and designed clothes for them, colored of course!

            At one time I wanted to be a dress designer, especially of the flashy “western” styles popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This later fell by the wayside as I made other career choices but I did learn to sew and could combine pattern pieces to change styles. I always drew and colored a planned garment before I made it.

            Even as an adult I would occasionally color a picture in one of the kids’ or grandkids’ color books and began to wish there were some mare sophisticated line drawing books for grown ups. Lo and behold, I finally found some. Most of them were made by a firm called Dover Books that did a lot of reprints of ancient books and classics. I am not sure where or why they began to do color books but they did. There were flowers, animals, ethnic and native costumes and geometric patterns. After I got some of them, I  decided colored pencils were often too pale and began to use felt tip markers which came in increasing ranges of colors.

            After my husband passed away, I spent many hours coloring some books I found that had Mandela patterns. There was something comforting about both the designs and choosing the right colors—at last what seemed right to me—to fill them in. There were still not a lot of grown up level coloring books around, though, and it seemed that even those for children were falling out of the vogue, replaced by stickers and other paper crafts and then all the electronic things.

            The last few years this has changed! I now see coloring books everywhere. Not a gadget and gizmo catalog comes to my mailbox that does not have color books in it, many with a set of colored pencils. I look askance at them still, but perhaps they are better than the kiddy quality I tried and discarded. Good artist quality pencils are far from cheap so I still mostly stick with the ‘magic marker’ style felt tipped pens. The worst thing about them is they tend to bleed through but fortunately the books I use are normally only patterned on one side of the pages.

            Now I have to laugh when I go on Facebook and Pinterest and find that a cousin and many friends and acquaintances are now coloring. They all seem to feel they have discovered something marvelous and new. I do not laugh at them but at myself for being either ahead of or behind the times which seems to be a family trait. All of us seem to start too soon or too late and miss the perfect timing that brings success and recognition.

            I have also used the ‘Paint” program on Windows (computer graphics) and created designs there. I stumbled almost by serendipity onto some basic patterns like zigzags, Greek key, stepped pyramids and such which can be combined to make designs that look very much like Navajo and other native rug patterns. I have a whole bunch of these now and have even used them on my website and some of my promotional material since my sig line for awhile was “romancing the southwest in tales of love and adventure,”  with a gecko for my totem creature. Two of those designs appear above.

            Although I will never be an artist, I do enjoy playing with colors and patterns and sometimes taking liberties with where the hues go, in or out of the assigned lines…  After all, I can often be found shoving smoke or herding cats, figuratively speaking that is. What is the fun of only doing easy, current faddish kinds of  things? Be a leader even if no one follows!

Strong Women

Strong Women—An Editorial

It must have been at least twenty years ago that I first saw a bumper sticker with the phrase “Uppity Women…” At the time it was cute. Now it is as dated as tie-dyed shirts, granny dresses and other ‘hippie’ paraphernalia. I also came across the phrase ‘Pushy Woman’ as part of a logo recently. That really got me to thinking.

I admire strong women. I think I am basically one myself. The thing is, those who really fit that paradigm have no need to advertise or claim the title! I just can’t imagine Aliy Zirkle, Deedee Jonrowe or Jessie Royer with an “Uppity Women” sticker on their dog truck! What they do speaks for itself. They are real kick-ass women.

Let’s look at some other examples. Most of us have now heard of Holly Holm, the “preacher’s daughter” from Albuquerque who won a big fight against the gal who was supposed to be the toughest woman on two feet. Do you think Holly has anything about uppity or pushy women on her car, luggage or boxing gloves? I don’t think so but who is going to dispute the fact she is one very tough young lady? I don’t think Rhonda Rousey will!

Take a look at Serena and Venus Williams. True, they compete with other women but if it came down to that I would bet on them to give Roger Federer or the Joke guy a real run for their money! And I would bet half that big lottery jackpot there is not one thing about uppity or pushy women in their gear!

Betcha Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir and now Angela Merkle didn’t ever have the words uppity or pushy on their business cards or stationery. When you are head of a powerful nation, that pretty well covers the situation. The thing is, you can be a woman, a lady and speak very softly while carrying whatever big shtick you may wield in the course of your career, avocation or life! Being a bitch is not being strong, it is just being a bitch!

Tough heroines are very popular now in science fiction and fantasy stories, some of which are also romances in which these gals have no need to be rescued and may even bail their guy out of a tight spot now and then. Agent Carter doesn’t have to claim she is uppity or pushy! Even Kate Beckett on Castle would not dream of putting such words on anything around her but those who have followed that show know she is one tough lady and now a Captain on the NYPD.

My point is, these tired and outworn tag lines may have served a purpose thirty or forty years ago when the so-called Women’s Revolution was just getting underway. Actually though I think even then the really strong and tough ladies did not need to hide behind phrases and sassy, hollow words. Belle Starr, Calamity Jane and Annie Oakley just let their guns and guts do the talking. So did some of the early women who competed in rodeo such as the Greenough sisters and others now enthroned in the Cowgirl Hall of Fame. They were not cowgirls, really, but cowboy girls. One of these days I will lay out the difference but this is not the time.

Anyway, I don’t call myself uppity or pushy. I don’t need to. I have handled bad mules and horses, struggled to load the carcass of a deer I had shot onto my saddle animal to bring home meat the family needed to survive on, carried a gun which basically ensured I did not have to use it or ever fight off a would-be rapist. I’ve told a few colonels what I thought of them in very ladylike terms and earlier or later the same day changed a tire on my SUV. I know who I am and what I am.

I’m a notch below my heroines, some of whom I have mentioned here but I am way beyond the pretenders and the wanna-bes who have to crouch behind a bumper sticker, a slogan or an in-your-face façade that really does not conceal the fact they don’t have the gear! Get real, ladies; if you’ve got it you don’t need to flaunt it. And you really don’t need to be nasty to be strong. Nasty is a lot more about bratty kids than people with courage and power. Think about it and what you really want to convey…

Suggestions for other visits

I promised no sales pitches here and I am not going to break that. I will only say that Amber Quill, which has been my main publisher for twelve years, is closing their doors forever on March 31 this year. That means all the titles of Deirdre O'Dare in their erotic romance lines will be out of print from that day on. I have no idea right now when or even if some or all of them will be republished in time in other venues. I'm pretty sure about half of them will not be for I do not currently intend to remarket them, You can start reading the blurbs for all sixty three titles, two every day or two,  at another blog: https://deirdredares.blogspot.com with links to where they are available. It's an age restricted blog, by the way, so teenagers are not invited. Nuff said!

Now this is not a sales pitch but I am quite disappointed that not many are

First family statue
in Fairbanks City Center

following my gwynnmorganalaska blog and learning about the wonderful sport of sled dog racing and some of the events, the people and the amazing dogs that are a part of this extreme sport! I know I have mentioned before my intent to write a book about the women who race their dog teams in the thousand mile endurance races, the Iditarod and the less known but equally taxing Yukon Quest. The racing season is just starting and I will follow all the major races closely and also report often on the doing at SP Kennels which I visited in 2014 and my favoritest mushers, Aliy Zirkle and Allen Moore. They have two litters of precious puppies born this fall and a litter of yearlings that I met as very young pupsters in August 2014. At any rate, please just go visit:  https://gwynnmorganalaska.blogspot.com.
You might be surprised at what you can read and learn! This one is open to everyone and kids may enjoy! I know a lot of school children will be following the Iditarod since the ITC (Iditarod Trail Committee) is huge on education and offer a wide range of fun activities and learning tools to all grade levels and annually sponsor a teacher who rides along in an "iron dog" (snowmobile to us lower 48ers) for the entire race!

As for this page, we will keep on keeping on with memoir tales, editorial comments on occasion and now and then a verse and some old pictures. I just hope a few of my regular readers here will check those other two out and see if anything speaks to you there!

RIP Amber Quill Press

I have been a proud and happy Amber Quill author for nearly twelve years.  My heart breaks to learn they are forced to close by the economic crunch of these times, mainly under the steamroller tactics of the heartless giant, Amazon. This is so wrong and I may address the politics of the current economic climate at a later time but right now I just need to write a heartfelt obituary for an outstanding small publisher. I penned these words originally about 24 hours ago with tears streaming. Like many needless deaths, it makes me very sad.

RIP Amber Quill

By now almost everyone in the small and independent publishing world has heard the news that Amber Quill is closing its doors. While it comes as a shock to everyone, not the least to the authors who have published there, it is primarily a sign of the times.

How many mom and pop stores have closed when a Big Box superstore came to town? WalMart has killed hundreds of small local stores all over America. Good or bad, it is a fact of this era. Amazon is the nine hundred pound gorilla in every area of publishing outside of the New York hub and probably gaining ground there as well. Big dogs do not like competition and they do not subscribe to the traditional ethics of us small folk in determining how they get rid of any ‘lesser’ beings who dare to intrude on their profits.  It is not my intent to rant on the political aspects of the modern economy but I do want to point out that a firm finding itself unable to continue in this climate deserves no shame or scorn.

I am sure there will be rumors and snarkisms flying at this point. I’m here to warn you, watch out what you say. I have been with Amber Quill for twelve years and have a total of sixty two story and novella length works with them, five novels and eleven collections or anthologies in print. I did not stay there and submit to them the bulk of my work for this span of time because I had no other choices. I stayed there because I felt it was my best choice among the many e-publishers, a lot of whom have come and gone during the time I have been a published writer, since 2001. Many left a bad taste in the mouths of all who had associated with them. I am sure I do not need to name names! We all know who they were and who some still are.

At any rate, back in 2002 several authors who had been stung in just such situations banded together to form a company, vowing to do it right. In my opinion they did an admirable job. Amber Quill has billed itself “The gold standard in publishing” and I do not feel that was an exaggeration. In twelve years I have never had a late royalty check or a suspicious accounting statement of the period’s sales. I have not had to front any cost of creating my books and found the editing, formatting, cover art and all other services to be truly outstanding. From this and personal contact with them, I know how the owners have worked, the heart and soul they all put into it. I also feel their personal anguish at this time when they realized it was no longer economically feasible to continue with the enterprise they had birthed and nourished. As much as I grieve for myself and my fellow AQ authors in this loss, I hurt more for them. Yet I hope they can take pride and consolation in knowing they have done a truly outstanding job for the duration.

That being said, I do not want to hear any innuendos, no snarky, sly remarks and no scathing put downs period. Anything said in that vein would be completely false and ill-deserved as far as I am concerned. The owners and staff of Amber Quill has fought a good fight and created a memorable enterprise, one which will continue to be a gold standard which others will have to strive hard to emulate. Even in the difficult business of closing, they are acting with the highest ethics and sensitivity for all involved. I call that a true class act. RIP Amber Quill; you will be remembered by many with deep love and respect. To all those who must now walk away, go in well deserved peace and harmony. Hold your heads high and be proud; you have done more than many ever will.

Memoir Essay--The Romance of the Rails

I've worked on this one for awhile. It has yet to be read at the OWL--older writer's league--at the Senior Center but will be early next year. I'm also working on it as part of a submission for an Amtrak Residency, a writing trip on an Amtrak train in the coming year of which they are offering twenty semi-scholarships! My fingers are crossed so tight they ache. Anyway, here you go.

The Romance of the Rails

           I've been fascinated with trains since I was quite small. Some very early memories, dim and more simple vignettes, involve drives with my parents from Jerome, Arizona to Flagstaff to meet a train bringing my maternal grandparents from Kentucky for a visit. I could not tell you if the locomotives were steam or diesel, but retain the noise and the sense of almost frightful power I felt as the trains pulled up. They stopped at the Tudor style brick depot at Flagstaff. That depot still stands, much the same in external appearance. It was almost an anomaly since so many of the Santa Fe depots were in the Spanish colonial style.

Flagstaff Depot c: 1966

            Actually both my grandfathers were railroad men. Grandpa Morgan ended his career with a long-vanished railroad called Chicago and Alton on which his last position was a passenger conductor. The conductor is actually the captain of the train crew because although the engineer drives the train, the conductor is the man in charge. I really do not remember that grandfather except in the vaguest way—mostly that he was a large man and allowed me to play with his big railroad pocket watch while he held me.

            Grandpa Witt I knew well as he did not die until 1998 at the age of 100 years and ten months! His work was on the administrative side—there was and still is a great deal of paperwork involved in operating a railroad—and his last job was chief clerk in a division office of the Louisville and Nashville, now absorbed into the CSX which along with the Norfolk & Southern comprise the two major eastern lines in the post merger era. At any rate, I’ve heard about trains all my life. Perhaps it is in the genes.

            In the middle 1950s, after our family moved from Jerome down to Clarkdale, there were actual trains to watch. One did not come every day but “the local” came to town at least once or twice a week. At that time, a lot more goods were moved by rail, especially to areas like the Verde Valley which was then accessed only by narrow two lane mountain highways difficult for large semis to travel. Most truck traffic was the shorter “bob tail” type with none of the fifty footers or double trailers we often see now. There was also the Railway Express Agency which brought packages to many folks before UPS and FEDEX were active.

            It wasn’t long before both my kid brother and I were watching for the train’s arrival. As soon as my brother Charlie was allowed to leave the yard, he would run down to the edge of the hill overlooking the spur track just east of our part of town so he could watch the trains. The locomotives were definitely diesel by then, at first GP-9s adorned in the black and white “zebra stripe” paint scheme that ATSF (Santa Fe) used then on freight locos. A bit later they were redone into the blue and gold that became familiar to us in the sixties. Once the cement plant was built between Clarkdale and Jerome and began to ship material off for the building of the Glenn Canyon Dam, traffic picked up to a minimum of two trains a week and often more.

            We became friends with the local track inspector, a grandfatherly old gentleman named Earl Ragsdale. Charlie, especially, made it a point to visit with him and learn the current railroad gossip and news. Earl always drove his motorcar, a small mechanized vehicle that ran on the tracks, to check the track for safety before the train traversed it. The line ran from Drake, where the branch line joined the main transcon line of Santa Fe, to Clarkdale. The “local”  originated in Prescott which is now totally cut off from the rails but then was a fairly busy place with one of the iconic Spanish colonial style depots.

            Charlie became a minor expert on the various types of cars, the locomotives and the specialized maintenance equipment which came in periodically with “work trains” which were crews with different specialties employed to do maintenance and repair of track, bridges, signals and other structures on which the trains depended. There were burro cranes and various surfacing machines, flat cars and box cars hauling supplies and materiel, and a few other machines. He created notebooks full of car numbers and sketches of various special or unusual equipment.

            At that time, especially on a branch or spur line, a great deal of the work was manpower intensive. The men in the gangs lived in “camp cars” which were old box cars and sometimes passenger coaches converted to use as bunk houses and a kitchen. It was a step above tents but not a big one. Conditions were pretty primitive! Most of the workers were single although some did go home to families on weekends and holidays.

            This practice is a thing of the past today, too. Such crews now stay in motels or use their own trailers or motor homes and get a per diem to cover—ostensibly—their away-from-home expenses. Much more work is done by a wide range of elaborate machines although there is still some manual labor, too. However, Charlie got to experience the traditional life first hand when he started work on the Denver and Rio Grande in the early 1970s. He worked out on the track for a few years and learned a lot. It was a good experience for a single young man at that time.

            Later he became a section foreman and held some other positions. Eventually he  got involved in the union side of the business, representing the maintenance workers, and spent the last third of his thirty eight year career in that effort ending as General Chairman for the former D&RG BMWE people.  I keep telling him he needs to write some stories or books because there are not too many folks around who got to see railroading as it once was in the latter phase of its glory days. Although he can write quite well, Charlie is more of a musician than a writer and can’t seem to find time to start on this.  I am not sure if I could ghost write for him or not!

            Back to the other part of the story. In 1964 we had a very wet summer. It was a big nuisance to the livestock business the family was involved in at that time We seemed to be fighting muck and mess for weeks and dealing with washed out roads, muddy corrals and trying to keep feed dry and healthy. The railroad had its own problems. One bridge in Clarkdale was washed out, repaired, and washed out again the day after the B&B (bridge and building—carpenters and heavy construction work) gang pulled out! The second time, they were in town from August into November. The foreman of that outfit became a very good friend of ours. 

            Of course that link really solidified my interest in the railroad business. Charlie had a crush for awhile on the daughter of a machine operator who was in town for a number of weeks, long enough that his family came along and they lived in a big former coach car made into quarters for them. The girl enrolled in school for part of a semester and was Charlie’s first girl friend as a middle school student. So we both had a new motive to keep tabs on the railroads.

            Still, I had never ridden on a train. That finally happened over the holiday season in 1965 when I “ran away” since I left home in a rather impromptu manner to spend time with my aunts in Sacramento, CA. I rode the San Francisco Chief from Flagstaff to Stockton, CA and later back the same route. This train was the equivalent of the famed Super Chief although it went north from Barstow instead of to Los Angeles. I even got to ride through the infamous Tehachapi Loop and its tunnels.

            I decided such travel was wonderful! A year or two later, while I was in college, I made that trip a couple more times and also went south to end up at San Bernardino where I visited a friend who lived in that area.  I have only ridden on a couple of tourist excursions since those days but my love for rail travel has not ceased. To me, it is the ideal way to travel! I have yet to ride on Amtrak but I hope to do so before long.

            I am still a Santa Fe fan although that railroad was merged with the Burlington Northern some years ago now and became the BNSF. It’s been long enough that one seldom sees locomotives in the old Santa Fe livery now. A few now operate on various small lines such as the Southwest Railroad that serves the Grant County, NM mines. I miss the “War Bonnets” and always will. The Santa Fe and the Rio Grande were both unique and special railroads. The Rio Grande has been swallowed up by the UP (Union Pacific), the other main western rail carrier.

            These days Charlie and I both feed our habit as lifelong rail fans by watching trains when we can and taking pictures on various trips we make. A secondary main line traveled at times by both UP and BNSF trains runs through our current home town. We can hear the trains from home and enjoy the rumble of the powerful diesels, the strange song of steel wheels on steel rails and the lonely voice of the whistles. In fact I can hardly sleep if my subconscious does not hear trains. I lived just a block from the Santa Fe mainline in Flagstaff for two years and didn’t realize how much I missed the sound until my last stay in Colorado from 2009 to 2011. The sound was not quite as loud there as it is here, but similar. You do not advertise “no railroad noise” to urge a lodging for me!

            

Although a rank amateur in photography, I have taken a few really good photos the last few years of which I am quite proud. I like to get a freight with some interesting landscape behind and around it. I’m very impressed with the video work of Peter Crook whose railroading videos are sold by Highball. He is a master at the trains in scenery views. I caught a UP modular train (carrying double stack containers) coming eastbound into Stein’s Pass on the Arizona-New Mexico border a couple of years ago. Then I got a westbound BNSF freight from the state highway cutoff that links I-10 to I-40 south and west of of Albuquerque. The latest one, an eastbound BNSF modular “stacker” I shot from Old Highway 66 between Seligman and Ashfork, AZ.

             Of course I also collect other photographer’s work, especially some of the great pictures featured by Trains Magazine on their website and regular contests where both fans and staff members can put up photos with a theme.  I’m not quite brave enough to try…but I may someday. I have a section of railroad pictures on my Pinterest page along with my crafts, book covers and other activities.

             My most recent train ride was on the excursion train run by park concessionaire Xanterra from Williams, AZ to the Grand Canyon and back. That trip was just as wonderful as I recalled! My only complaint was it did not last half as long as I would have wished! I may go back when I can. And I am sure I will go to my final days as an avid rail fan so I will try to share some of my other train related tales in time. Among my ambitions is to ride on the Alaskan Railroad from Anchorage to Fairbanks with a stop at Denali.