“On The Dead Run”

“On The Dead Run”

My earliest memories of my folks is how they worked. They always worked, very rarely was there any time to sit down and relax as they worked the farm/ranch with one thing in mind to make things a success. I learned at an early age they viewed life as if you didn’t work you were a sinner. Idle hands created trouble and if you were not busy there was something really the matter with you. The picture you see of them in harvest in the 1960’s is very typical of my folks. You can see my mom is going one direction and my Dad is running the other. Very typical of these two hard working...

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Two Characters

Two Characters

My Dad and my Uncle were always my hero’s when I was growing up. My Dad was the “The Great White Hunter” and my Uncle Glen who was my mom’s brother was” the Cowboy” hero. These two were wilder than “March hares” when they were growing up on the prairie of Northern Montana in the 1920’s. They hunted, coyotes, skunks, and weasels and trapped all three in the winter. They rode horses and most of all pulled pranks on any and all unsuspecting people. Friends, family, schoolmates, neighbors, and teachers weren’t exempt from these two....

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Finding Friends

You never know when or where you will meet good friends. I went to Overland Park, Kansas years ago for the Railroad to be re-certified on my engineers license. I didn’t know anyone in my class because my two engineer friends from home were in a different class. The first day of class the instructor spent some time introducing himself and then went around the room to ask everyone to tell the class their name and a little about themselves. When he came to my classmate who soon became my friend the instructor asked him the general questions. My friend said he was on the Railroad for a...

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Old Hogheads {Engineers to you Flatlanders}

I was always fascinated by the old Engineers when I was a young brakeman on the Railroad. There were some real characters. One in particular was very hard of hearing I’m the same way now. As I think about it I don’t know if he was that hard of hearing because if you dropped a 50 cent piece on the floor he sure as hell could hear that. Maybe just tired of talking to young brakemen, a real possibility. He was also very negative in all that you could bring up to talk about. One day we got on the train in Glasgow heading West. The wind was really howling, so just for something to say...

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A Heady Railroad Tale

When I was a young brakeman on the Railroad I was with my good buddy Kenny C. the engineer. We were out of Glasgow, Montana heading West toward home when the Train Dispatcher called and said to stop the train and inspect the 4 Locomotives that we had on the train that day. He was very specific to look very carefully underneath the engines/locomotives. He did not explain why we were stopped out in the middle of nowhere looking for what we didn’t know. We did as we were told and called him back on the radio and told him we had inspected the locomotives and found nothing. He told us it...

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