THEM RICH FOLKS!Time was, and tain’t been too long ago either, when I was, I will admit, downright envious of all that rich people had and the way some of them flaunted their wealth in front of us. Goin’ wide-open honest, for the moment, I’d have to say it was more like being jealous. It was something more than just having an occasional pang of envy...deeper...and it could hit heavy when I witnessed a display of wealth.
Looking back a those pre-teen and teenager days I realize it only happened occasionally usually in early Spring and again in the first days of the first says of early Spring or just before the Fall arrived.
At two set times of the year a change took, place in the railroad town in which I grew up. We had seventeen trains per day at our two railroad stations which were on the north-south rail axis. In the Fall the wealthy owners of private railway cars passed through on their way to Florida; in the Spring they went north.They were fabulous creations and seemed they grew larger and more ornate as the years went by. It was the custom of wealthy people chug south for winter and eagerly back to the north in summer.
We boys had a favorite place for obsevation of said private train cars. In those days the Railway Express had four or five, twenty-foot carts on the ramp The woodenc deck on the carts was good four feet off the platform and the carts were used to drag up to fill the expanse of the rather higb,open doors of the express cars to unload or stow shipment aboard. Those carts were our special observation platforms well above obstructions putting our questing eyes more on a level. Our town of Radford, Va. had a complicated switching system at the eastern end of the extensive yards which made to necessary for many trains to be, liteally,”backed up” or pushed into the to allow other trains to use certain tracks. The delays worked to in our advantges in examining the visiting cars.We were often overcome by the elaborate designs. The owners had their name emblazoned on the sided of the cars and they were really museum pieces.
They are all gone today. I suppose they are actually in some museums. Or, more likely, stripped an discarded hulks in landfills everywhere...discarded toys.
A.L.M. November 22, 2005 [c443wds]
