Short Story: The Railroad
We lived next to the railroad tracks and coal trains were constantly going by. Coal and coal trains were the crucial to the economy in southern West Virginia. The house would shake and coal dust settled on the house with each passing train. You could almost set your watch by the clickety-clack sound of the cars over the tracks. The sound of the train was music to my ears and would put me to sleep. Many of my friends' fathers worked on the railroad. Except for a few months as a fireman, the railroad was the only job my Dad had ever worked since returning from the Korean War and marrying mom. He had been a mechanic in the army and it was an easy step to work on the railroad. He worked the midnight shift, 11pm to 7am. The midnight shift allowed him to sleep during the day while we were at school and then he could come to our afternoon or evening athletic events which he never missed. Dad believed in hard work and that one would be rewarded for such work. He was a proud union member and firmly believed that it was only union power that gave the working man a decent living.
I was in my bedroom putting on my pajamas when I received a whiff of the warm, pungent smell of Ben Gay. That meant one thing, Dad was getting ready to go to work. He used Ben Gay to dull the arthritis pain in his knees. He was sitting on the couch as I walked into our small living room. His work boots were sitting by the door. The CBS Evening News was on and Walter Cronkite was discussing the election in which LBJ had won. Dad was so happy.
Mom had just finished putting a late supper on the table. She and Dad had been at a Parent Teacher Association meeting and it had run late. It was our standard meal of pinto beans, cornbread, fried potatoes, fried garlic bologna, and sweet tea. On other evenings we might have fried chicken or spam in place of bologna. I didn’t care for spam but Dad had loved it since his time in the army, so Mom always had plenty of it. He took spam sandwiches in his lunchbox to work. Dad sat down to dinner with his newspaper just as a train went by. He meticulously read the entire newspaper ignoring the clickety-clack. While we ate dinner, he briefly mentioned LBJ by quoting his margin of victory in the election. Mom announced to us that my uncle, who had enlisted in the Air Force, was leaving for Vietnam in a couple of months or so. He had just gotten his orders. He believed that it was important to serve his country, just like President Kennedy had told us to do. Mom didn’t like that fact that her brother was going overseas to war as it brought back memories of my father in Korea.
“Dad, where is Vietnam?”
“It’s in Southeast Asia. Find it on the globe in your room.”
“So, why should we be there?” I was growing more curious and more bold.
“We have to stop the communists.”
I thought a minute. “Did you fight communists in Korea?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Did we win?”
“Eat your supper please.”
Mom, who was alwarys reading books in the house, chimed in, "You should go to the library at school and read about Vietnam and the communists."
I had no idea what communists were but obviously they had to be bad. Since my uncle was going to Vietnam, I made a special promise to mom and myself that I would find out and understand more of what was happening in the world outside our little town, especially Vietnam. By the end of dinner the clickety-clack of another coal train could be heard.
After Dad left for work, I went back to my small bedroom that I shared with my brother who was in the second grade. I got in bed and started thinking about working on the railroad like my Dad. It was a good job. I decided at that moment that after I spend time in the army, I was going to work on the railroad just like him. I wanted to be just like my Dad. Another train went by the house. I turned on my transistor radio so I could listen to our local radio station and drifted off to sleep to the clickety-clack of the train cars and the sound of “When I Grow Up to Be a Man” by the Beach Boys.
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