A PERCHER
We laughed when a kid called Carl joined us in the community who insisted that his Grandfather was a railroad engineer. He was proud of the distinctive fact that his Grandpa was a “percher” and to be of great importance to the success of the railroad. Without Grandpa on the job the railroad would be doomed. It would be forced out of business.
No one man is ever that important, we thought and, as kids we decided to find out how the little boy could be so stubborn as to insist on his Gram pa being of such worth to the railroad. One of our group asked the kid's mother what her father did for a living and she, too, prujdly told us he was indeed a railroad engineer. Furthermore, she added:”He's a percher, too! He's the only one they have, so they depend on him a great deal.”
In time Carl showed us photographs of his Grandpa standing on the bottom step leading up to the cabin of about the biggest steam locomotive ever built. It as a monster. Granddad was a small person under a big shock of white hair and he had a cheerful smile very much like little Carl, we realized.
It all turned out to be a dialect problem .Those folks were from across the mountain from us and they talked differently from people on our side. I think that was the first time I come to understand how such differences could divide basically kindred people from each other. Carl's granddaddy was , indeed, a true railroad engineer,a lifelong employee of the railway company, and in his semi-retired status was the engineer on an ancient but still powerful steam monster which was needed to push the cars of coal over the mountain grade. Carl was correct in claiming that Granddaddy kept the railroad going and when I got to know Granddad better myself, i learned to agree with him on that point. they are shared/ It was his job to wait on a siding and tag his engine to the rear end of the long coal train from the mountain's mines. He pushed the long row of cars across the mountain and waited on the flatlander side to help push extra long trains of empty cars -well over a hundred across the ridge to be refilled and sent back to the collier's waiting in Hampton Rhodes and the Chesapeake Bay area of Virginia.
Carl's family had some other strange word usages they used. We, in time, I now see, absorbed them as ours and they took ours over as their own.
It strikes me that might have been a good thing for all of us. It is good to have someone who can willingly take over our mistakes, help you us through hard times, be ready and waiting to help again and through the hard times, and be ready and waiting for anything which might come along to impede our progress. Rewards are more enjoyable when they can be shared.
A.L.M. April 21, 2004 [c517wds[
