Mr. Jones

I could swear that I have written about Mr. Jones before, but I am getting old. Anyway, Mr. Jones was a patient of my dad's and worked in Jackson, TN for the Illinois Central railroad as an engineer (he drove trains). I must have been about four years old when my dad came home from work one day and took me to the IC station. Mr. Jones had asked him if he thought that I would like to ride in the engine with him when The Seminole (a famous train of the day that came through every other day on the way from Chicago to New Orleans (I think)). The engine had to go to the yard to get more coal and water in Jackson, and it was that trip that I made more than once sitting in Mr. Jones ' lap.

Oh My!! Was that a treat or what? It was a combination of several things, excitement, fear, and a treat too. The steam engines of the day were hot, noisy, hissing, and lots of other things that awed a four year old. We sat on the left of the boiler with a firebox underneath. The fireman, who in those days was as far as a black made in the rail business, was constantly shoveling coal from the coal car into the hellish firebox to keep the steam up. There were a variety of valves, wheels, etc. that had to be manipulated too. Then there was the whistle! It seemed about to blow me out of the cab, but Mr. Jones would let me pull the lever. We made the trip to the yard and back as often as my dad could take me, and I have never forgotten the smell of that burning coal.

One day close to the time that Mr. Jones was to retire, he came through town on The City of Miami which had become diesel powered. He pushed me up into the cab. It was clean and cool. The horn sounded like a horn and not a whistle. I didn't know that I was seeing the end of an era. Had it not ended, I wonder if I would not have been an engineer like Mr. Jones.