GRANDMOTHER EDWARD'S HOUSE IN HAMILTON

This blog may only appeal to architectural minds, but it was a good house to spend holidays and vacations in.

I'm not exactly sure when my mother's parents moved from the farm house with no running

water and an outhouse to the much larger house in town (Hamilton). But I know my mother was

born in the farm house and there are photos of her at the farm house when she appears to be 6 or 7 and then photos at the new house where she looks to be 9 or 10.

So sometime between 1923 and 1926 they all moved to town and grandmother's new house. And sometime after that and before I was born the front porch was screened in.

Grandmother Edwards (GE) was very involved with the Methodist church (in background of

photo) and it happened to be right next door across the gravel driveway (gravel strips leading into the double garage which was not attached to the house).

The garage had two heavy wooden sliding doors that moved either way to get out one car or the other - I can only ever remember one car. Also inside the garage were the cane fishing poles and a tool bench and the watering cans to water the flowers as GE had an extensive flower garden which she was quite proud of.

During much of the year you would find fresh cut flowers on the dining room table. And I believe that my mother said GE did all the flowers for their wedding at her house and I'm sure flowers for numerous church functions through the years. From the side door of the garage (my uncle John always said it like "gare age") a side walk lead to the screened-in back porch past the gunny sack swing (filled with leaves) hanging from the biggest tree in the yard. To the left of this sidewalk was GE's flower garden and vegetables at times also (the best tasting tomatoes of my life!) and to the right was a large from yard where the chickens ran around after getting their heads chopped off. It's hard to believe that they let us watch such an event, but life was more real back then and you learned a lot about life as a child in a farm community.

The back porch had a slight slope and surrounded the kitchen on two sides, the one toward the garage and the back side. I suppose the slope allowed any water that rained in to drain but I don't think anyone ever said why it was that way. On the back side of the porch was some equipment for churning milk in my early years and it seems like on the garage side there was a freezer at one time. GE also had a meat locker at a storage facility downtown to hold the beef that was slaughtered and packaged in Emporia. My grandfather and later my uncle John raised registered black Angus cattle and we ate some form of beef or pork three meals a day when at GE's house. We also took a quarter of beef back to Oklahoma from each trip to Kansas, so I had beef at home as well. This probably accounts for my currently not liking beef as well as other things - that and the carcinogenic factors with red meat. I wonder if Kansas beef from my earlier years (when cattle were fed more natural stuff) was such a problem?

From the back porch door a sidewalk led past more flowers (always hydrangeas) outside the

dining room windows and around to the front on the front screened-in porch. On the front porch was a glider, which is an outdoor couch that moves back and forth at level like a swing. The front porch had two doors into the house, the main one to the left led into the dining room and small sitting area by the stairs and the one on the right (which was always locked) led into the living room.

Inside the main front porch door was the stairway immediately on the right and the large dining room table on the left. I can remember as many as 10 people seated at this table on holiday meals. Past the stairway to the right was a small couch and chair and a storage area under the stairs on the right and GE’s china cabinet on the right. On top of the china cabinet was a chiming clock that we could hear through the night if we woke. It chimed on the hour and the half hour as I remember. Just past the china cabinet was a door into GE’s bathroom and straight ahead lead into the large living room where we played cards (hearts, canasta and later bridge) and board games and opened presents at Christmas. GE’s bedroom was adjacent to the living room on the back side of the house. It had glass doors that closed when needed. On the far west side of the living room was another door to the outside which was seldom used and remained locked. The porch outside was the length of the north side of the house but never used in my memory. GE’s bathroom had one of the only two tubs in the house so often some of the children’s baths would be downstairs. I once got into big trouble for going to pee in her bathroom while my cousin, Charlene, was taking a bath. How’s a guy with no sisters supposed to learn anything about girls anatomy? (She was probably 10 and I was 8!) Also got in trouble for figuring out how to turn GE’s piggy bank upside down to remove quarters. I gave my brother, Mark, and my two cousins their fair share of the proceeds, but my younger cousin let the word slip out.

Back to the dining room, past the table led into the kitchen where GE spent a lot of time cooking always breakfast and lunch or dinner. We had typical ranch breakfasts with sunny-side up eggs and bacon or link sausage and toast and home-made jelly (my favorite was pear honey, which for sure had more sugar than pears). When we would fish in the evenings (you could only go if you took a nap), she would fry the fish for breakfast the next morning – good stuff! The kitchen had the stove on the east side, the sink with a hand pump from the well on the south side, cabinets for dishes and the mixer and Foley food mill and meat grinder storage on the north side and the refrigerator and a door to the basement on the west side. Also on the west side was a small broom closet and mounted on the wall, the Daizy can opener. The kitchen table had four chairs and any larger group ate in the dining room. The basement door led down a steep wooden stairway with a rickety pipe railing to a dank and dark smallish basement where I can remember some canned fruits and jellies being stored. It wasn't the kind of place to go hide or play - just a place to peer into.

GEs house was a house of four gables, all being part of the roof structure and each over one of the upstairs three bedrooms except the one over the upstairs bathroom. Having only one bathroom upstairs was a significant improvement over the two-hole outhouse at the farm house. The stairway up to the second from was an L-shaped left turn

with a small landing half-way. It was carpeted in the center of each step with about 6" of wood on each side. At the very top step in the back corner on the right side was a wooden plug in a hole. We were always told that it was a mouse hole and thus we moved quickly by. The south bedroom (pictured in the gable photo) belonged to Grandmother Werts (GEs mother) who was alive until I was 12. The windows of that room looked out toward the driveway and the garage and I remember one particular story about GM Werts, who was a very proper Pennsylvania Dutch woman. When she was in the last weeks of her life, she was confined to her bed and could only be lifted out of bed to the nearby chair. One day just as the farm hands and Uncle John were arriving for lunch, GE looked out the window and said "There comes Morey, we can get him to help lift you out of bed." GM Werts said emphatically, "Not Morey!" as she had no intention of anyone who wasn't family entering her bedroom.

We always stayed in the east room, which to me was the largest but probably was about equal to the south room. Looking at the photos of the house and subtracting the width of the stairs, they appear to be an exact match including windows and gable. Also the photo show the extra detail that GF Edwards had done on the house for his young bride. (Either that or there is the likelihood that she insisted on the details herself, knowing the firmness of the decisions I saw her make in my lifetime.) The east room had a double bed and as I remember a twin bed or a roll-away. The windows all had spring roller pull down shades and lace curtains. What I remember doing the most in the east room was two things: taking naps so we could go fishing and thunder and lightning storms which were more than exciting with windows on three sides.

The south side had the small bathroom with a claw foot tub. I remember it was a pleasant pastel green and had porcelain handles on sink and bathtub. Uncle John had either been born without a gall bladder or had had it removed and he was always a slight yellowish-orange in color and the bathroom always had a slightly strange aroma probably related to his metabolic situation. He also had had polio as a child and wore a several inch lift on one of his shoes. This prevented him from riding horses on the farm.

I cannot remember how, when the Shannons and the Edmondson (each with four people) visited for holidays while GM Werts was still living, we all found places to sleep. But I know it happened.

The final memory I have of GE's house was what I used to do when it was evening and everyone else was gathered in the living room and I needed something from upstairs. I would turn the light on and go upstairs and turn the hall light on and then the east room light. Then when I had what I needed, I would race back down the stairs at break-neck speed as if the boogey man was right behind me.

We had a lot of good times in GE's house - maybe more there than anywhere else.

FATHER'S DAY 2009

On this 100th anniversary of Father's Day, I started thinking about the fathers in my family. When Spencer was born in 2004, there were three generations of fathers alive in our family on the Shannon side. Looking back in our ancestral tree, it may be the only time that this has ever or ever will happen. In my case my great grandfather Nolker lived until I was five, but I don't remember meeting him. My grandfather Shannon died four years before I was born and my grandfather Edwards less than two years after. My great grandfather Nolker (Shannon) actually lived nine years after my grandfather Shannon died (four years before I was born).

There are two reasons that come to mind why the 3 generations of fathers alive at one time did not occur before and won't be repeated. The life span of the past was usually not much past the 50s because heart disease was so prevalent. And now children go to college and on to graduate degrees and start families later which makes the age span of each generation almost 30 years and that makes it impossible to have four generation alive at any time.

So this photo of the four generations and the three generations of dads is pretty radical.

MY GRANDFATHER'S BARN & SILO

In the early Kansas morning, sometimes before sunup, we grand kids (either two or four depending on whether our cousins from Lawrence were there) would climb into the cab if cold or the back if warm of Uncle John's Chevy pickup and head slowly down the back road to "the farm". My grandfather had died when I was two years old so Uncle John was our "grandfather" figure. We took the dirt road about a mile and then another mile on the highway till we turned in to the barn yard.

Just past where the road crossed the highway was "the windmill" which pumped water into the horse tank by the barn which grew a little of what is now known as "pond scum" around the edges. The barn yard was surfaced with gravel and from time to time we could find small circular fossils in the gravel. We would make holes in the center of and string them together.

The predominant site as we turned into the farm was the big white two story barn (in recent decades painted red). This barn had many functions and was a fascinating place for young kids to explore. There were two "dutch" doors on the front. The center door opened into the center isle which had an open area for cows on the left and in the back on the left a large door opening to the pen side of the barn. On the right of the isle were two horse stalls and then a ladder to the hay mow and then a grain bin with a sliding door. The door to the right on the front opened into the area behind the horse stalls where the saddles, bridles an other tack for the horses hung on the end wall.

We were allowed to get a bucket of oats for the horses which they ate while being saddled and bridled. My memories of the exact animals inside the barn are fuzzy, but I seem to remember seeing a cow milked at some time on the cow side and I remember the sight and sound of the horses chewing on the other side.

Most fascinating for the grand kids was the hay mow. The hay was bailed in the fields and then brought to the barn on a hay wagon pulled by the tractor. Men would then throw the bales up and into a window of the hay mow which was on the right end of the barn. Hay hooks were used to grab the bales and of course it wasn't until we got older that we were allowed around the hay hooks and their sharp points.

The hay was stacked systematically in the hay mow so that there could be maximum use of the space. Gradually as the hay was used there would start to be little areas where bales had been removed that we could hide in or jump into and we moved some of the bales around to make better play places. The down side was that since I had developed asthma at 7mos old, every time I went to play in the hay I knew that it would make me wheeze. However the fun was too much and a little wheezing was worth the price.

Just a stones toss along the lane behind the barn was our other favorite play place at the farm, the concrete stave silo. The silo was even taller than the barn and had a chute on the front and handles by each silo window which we were able to climb as we got older and taller.

The silo was filled with a mixture of corn cobs, corn shocks, and perhaps other grain-type things I can't recall. I don't remember being at the farm when the silo was filled, which involved chopping up the corn, etc with a silage chopper and then blowing the silage up and over the top of the silo.

Each of the windows was closed with a silo door (I have one of them in my garage) and the silo then filled close to the top. In the winter when the cattle didn't have grass to eat, we would pull a

wagon up to the silo and Albert or Morey would climb to the top of the silo and shovel the "insulage" through the opened window and it would fall down the chute and into the wagon; and we would then take it to the fields and spread it for the cattle. In the summer it just made a place to climb up and peer down into the empty silo. With my current dislike of high places, my memory is blunted as to how high I used to climb back then.

These days the old barn and silo have only each other to talk to. The are no kids in the hay mow or horses in the stalls or feet on the silo ladder - just memories carried by those who were there.

VACATIONS AND TRAVEL

My grandfather Edwards is quoted as saying, "I'd go a thousand miles to see a friend, but I wouldn't go across the street to see scenery". Myself, I would go a thousand miles to see either, and the travels I had growing up were certainly more memorable than any house we lived in or car we drove (a comment on live in the OC before the current recession).

My earliest travel memory would be from Columbus to the Circleville Pumpkin Show. What I remember most is the orange pennant that I had in my collection (along with the scarlet and gray one that I had at the Rose Bowl later) which may still be in some box somewhere. Anyway, it made a real impression on me. Google says the show has been around October of 1903 and is always on the third Wednesday through Saturday of October.

The show is complete with a queen and her court, a parade and a competition for the largest pumpkin. The latest winner must have been on steroids weighing in at 1375.5 pounds. Even the water tower in Circleville, Ohio is shaped and painted like a pumpkin.

While we were in Columbus, my grandmother Edwards came to visit and we took a trip to Washington, D.C. On the way we stopped off at Abraham Lincoln's boyhood cabin and I suppose that's where brothe r Mark began his boyhood fascination with Mr. Lincoln.

In D.C. I remember two things mos t prominently: the sight of all the cherry trees in blossom and seeing Harry Truman out for his walk early one morning.

After moving to Oklahoma, we gradually visited many of the state parks including Beaver's Bend, Roman Nose and Lake Texoma. Because of my Dad's career in education we went to visit the Fort Sill Indian School, which was the first place my brother and I had ever come into contact with "Native Americans." We were fascinated by the costumes they wore when doing native dances. A little history reveals that the schools were an idea of the government as an attempt to "civilize" the Indian children. "The U.S. government, backed up by eastern humanitarians and church groups, instituted a policy of "civilizing" the Indians in which they felt they must "kill the Indian to save the man." Education was the cornerstone of this policy. Indian children were forced to attend reservation day schools or far-away boarding schools...children were torn from their families and sent to these schools. Officials and humanitarians did not believe that Indian children were capable of becoming doctors, lawyers, or academics so instead they taught them industrial and domestic arts, American history, and English.

The Comanche School was located near Fort Sill and known as the Fort Sill Indian School. This school was founded about 1892. It started with only forty boys the first year. The buildings were all ready but because of the inability to secure ready-made clothing for girls, there were only boys in the school. The next year there were forty girls." (Life Among the Texas Indians: The WPA Narratives By David La Vere) As my brother and I learned, Oklahoma had many Indians, including members of the "Five Civilized Tribes" and much about Oklahoma was about the history of Indians, including the names of many of the towns and counties.

Our longest trip while living in Norman came in 1954. Even though we were by then strong OU football fans, we still all had a strong tie to Buckeye football as well. My Dad promised Mark and me that if Ohio State went to the Rose Bowl we would go. We pestered him so much about it that he even decided to go to California that Christmas even if OSU didn't make it. Grandmother Edwards went with us, partly to finance the trip.

We joined Route 66 in Oklahoma City and rode it all the way to Hollywood through Amarillo, Albuquerque, Gallup, the Painted Desert, Kingman, Barstow, San Bernadino and on to Hollywood. In Albuquerque we stayed at the De Anza motel which is now a historical landmark and being revitalized.

In Hollywood we stayed at the first motel we had ever seen with a swimming pool in the courtyard. Two stories stand out in memories of this trip. While driving in Westwood sightseeing, my Dad somehow got to an intersection where there were multiple lanes and made a left turn from the middle lane, only to be pulled over by a motor cycle policeman who wasn't very friendly to tourists.

The second memory involves the Rose Bowl parade and game. The weather was typical beautiful southern California until January 1. We sat through the Rose Bowl parade in misty cold rain and then moved on to the stadium for the game. At the last minute a Kansas friend of my folks had gotten us two extra tickets, so Mark and Dad sat on the USC side and Mom and I on the OSU side. At half time TBDBITL (Buckeye Band) came onto muddy field and did "Script Ohio", and of course when they left the field you could still see Ohio in the mud, much to the dismay of the USC fans.

My red OSU pennant got soaked and dripped red on some USC fan in front of me, also causing dismay.

The score of the game also caused USC dismay as the unbeaten "great Ohio State football machine sputtered from time to time in the muck and mire of a field wetted down by a day-long rain."

(written for the UP by the first female sports writer to ever cover a Rose Bowl game, Miss Faye Loyd)

Ironically, many of the places on this trip would be prominent in my later life, as my folks wound up just south of Amarillo in my Dad's last years at West Texas A&M,

we moved to New Mexico (and stayed at the De Anza many times visiting Albuquerque) after leaving Norman,

and Vera and I left Chicago and medical school to live just east of Hollywood during residency at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles in the early 70s.

FORKS IN THE ROAD

ROAD LESS TRAVELED

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth

Then took the other as just as fair

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear

Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really about the same

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet, knowing how way leads onto way

I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence

Two roads diverged in a wood

And I took the one less traveled by

And that has made all the difference

Robert Frost

Last Wednesday while walking with my longest walking partner, John Bruce, we got onto the subject of the forks in the road that ultimately determine where we are for the next segment of our life. Often the path chosen, although initially causing those  out-of-control feelings, turns out to be the perfect choice when we look back over the decades of life.

My parents decided to leave a comfortable teaching and band directing job in Garnett and go off to the midwest. They weren't even really sure which road they would take, Ohio State or Michigan, until they had gone through Columbus and on to Ann Arbor and then back to OSU.

Leaving Ohio State to return to Oklahoma was probably an easier choice because of having family in Kansas, one state away. However, choosing to go from the University of Oklahoma to a much smaller school in the wide open spaces of New Mexico must have been a much more difficult choice.

The next fork in the road was mine, and it involved really a series of turns. When it came time to apply for college, I really wanted to go to Cal Berkely and I was admitted with honors.

 I also applied to K.U. and my parents had far fewer out-of-control feelings about me going to a college where my aunt and uncle lived and where my grandmother lived only a short distance away. What they didn't realize was that having never allowed me to have those out-of-control feelings in sufficient number had set me up to have a poor fund of knowledge regarding consequences. As a result, I had one of the most exciting years of my life, but my grades were not as exciting; and the grades guaranteed that I could not go to KU med as an out-of-state applicant and that I would have to 4 point out through the next three years of college to have any chance at any  medical school. In the end, I returned home to New Mexico, attended college where my Dad was the Dean and later Vice President, ate crow at home because of my freshman grades, and  thought that I would have a better chance at medical school entrance than was really realistic.

 

At the time New Mexico had just started a medical school in Albuquerque in 1961 and admitted their first class in 1964. So had I gone there I would have been in the third class to go through. I applied to 10 medical schools, was accepted at UNM and received eight "sorry" letters in the mail. 

I applied to Northwestern probably for two reasons: it would be back to the Big Ten and I'm sure it crossed my mind that it would get me quite a ways away from all my family and hopefully to somewhere that I could be the ultimate person in charge of my future. It was 18 degrees below zero the night that I interviewed at Northwestern, but that didn't deter my wanting to go there. My interview went really well and the dean of students  fortunately took time to listen to my story and to my strong desire to be a physician (none in my family); and maybe he thought they needed a little southwestern drawl to add diversity to the class.  I will never forget being at the ENMU library studying one snowy night, when Dad came trudging through the snow with the telegram from Northwestern. I was going to be able to take the turn in the road that I truly wanted.

The next turn was about my significant other. I went to medical school still "attached" to a New Mexico girl that I had gone with during my junior and senior years. She even came to Chicago to visit in the spring of my freshman year at NUMS. But a fork in the road arose that summer when I chose to do an elective in genetics at Children's Memorial. 

I met two Lithuanian sisters, one who was working in tissue culture and the other who was a nursing student at Loyola. The older one who worked in the lab seemed pretty "fast" for me. She was always dragging in on Monday mornings after partying all week-end at Indiana Dunes. But her sister, the nursing student had a boy friend. Regardless, the began asking me to come to the South Side to have dinner at the home (and it was amazing food for a starving medical student who was heating canned food in a popcorn  popper and eating "all you can eat" fish and chicken nights at the local hotel near the medical school). I gradually got to  know both sisters rather well and thoroughly enjoyed their family. In the fall, I wound up asking Elvyra, the eldest, to a concert by the Kingsmen at the Northwestern main campus. We had a really good time and began dating thereafter. I continue writing to my girl friend in New Mexico, but eventually realized that she wasn't the one and sent her the horrible "dear john" letter. I took the Lithuanian road and it was because of Vera that we took the turn to California rather than Denver Childrens or Seattle Childrens, where I thought I would have preferred.

The next to last turn in my life road was at the end of residency when we were torn between coming to Mission Viejo or going to Thousand Oaks. The areas are really quite similar and were at about the same stage of development in 1973. The deciding factor was probably that we had spent several week-ends in Laguna Beach at the rental home of a Riverside dentist  on the ocean side of Coast Highway just south of Laguna Royale condominiums. Some resident family would rent the place for the week and we would all drive down for Saturday and Sunday.  It was on some of those week-ends that we got a good chance to look at Mission Viejo and made the choice

.

The last turn in my road of life was to leave my original pediatric practice mid-career and for maybe the first time in my life, choose what was truly best for ME. That choice has turned out to be the second best of my life, the first having been being lucky enough to choose my loving wife, Vera.

MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH TRAINS

http://trainweb.org/rwy/MerleHaggard-MyLoveAffairWithTrains.mp3

The first train I can remember vaguely was the train that my friend in Buckeye Village and I rode out bikes out to see as it crossed the road west of the housing area in Columbus. I can only remember that it was a steam engine and nothing more.

The next train thing I remember was being in the railroad station in St. Louis, probably going from Columbus to Emporia, Kansas to grandmother Edwards.

St. Louis Union Station opened on September 1, 1894, and was owned by the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis. Designed by Theodore Link, it included three main areas: the Headhouse, the Midway and the 11.5-acre (47,000 m2) Train Shed. The headhouse

originally housed a hotel, a restaurant, passenger waiting rooms and railroad ticketing offices. It featured a gold-leafed Grand Hall, Romanesque arches, a 65-foot (20 m) barrel-vaulted ceiling and stained-glass windows. The clock tower is 280 feet (85 m) high. Union Station's headhouse and midway are constructed of Indiana limestone and initially included 32 tracks under its vast trainshed terminating in the stub-end terminal. At its height, the station combined the St. Louis passenger services of 22 railroads. At its opening, it was the world's largest and busiest railroad station and its trainshed was the largest roof span in the world. As railroad passenger services declined in the 1950s and 1960s, the massive station became obsolete and too expensive to maintain for its original purpose.In August 1985, after a $150 million renovation, Union Station was reopened with a 539-room hotel, shopping mall, restaurants and food court. The hotel is housed in the headhouse and part of the train shed, which also houses a lake and shopping, entertainment and dining establishments. Omni was the original hotel operator, followed by Hyatt Regency Hotel chain and now Marriott Hotels as of December 2008.

In Norman Mark and I received our first American Flyer train set with transformer. As I remember we had a plywood 4x8 across our two dressers for the layout to be on.

A little American Flyer history: In 1938, W.O. Coleman sold American (Chicago) Flyer to Alfred Carlton Gilbert, a former Olympic pole vaulter who first made a name for himself in the toy industry earlier in the century when he created and manufactured Mysto Magic sets for youthful magicians. A few years later, his A. C. Gilbert Company also became the makers of Erector Set construction toys. The two toy magnates were just finishing shooting on Gilbert's game reserve in New Haven when Gilbert casually mentioned he was thinking about manufacturing toy trains. Instead, Coleman said he'd give his struggling American Flyer Co. to Gilbert in return for a share of the profits. Gilbert quickly agreed. Although popular, American Flyer was always the second-ranked brand to Lionel in terms of market share at the high end of the market. With Marx and a handful of other brands relegated to the low end of the market, Lionel and American Flyer shared premium status. A rivalry emerged between both companies' fans that continues today. Like Lionel, Gilbert was caught off guard by the popularity of HO scale trains that offered better realism at a lower price than its American Flyer S gauge products.

After we moved to Cruce street, a gentleman whose house was on the corner of Broad Lane and Boyd invited me to see his HO trains and I became an HO fan. My second job in Norman was working in the hobby store near the tracks on Main street. Of course I made very little money because I always had more train stuff on lay-a-way. I read Model Railroader from cover to cover and created dream layouts in my head and on paper.

Addendum: Found the gentleman's name in a letter my Mom wrote her mom April 1960:

"Mike went down to Mr. Reid's the engineering professor who lives by Porter's and is a great model railroader, last night -- went for a minute and stayed 2 hours. Came home with an armload of stuff that Mr. Reid gave him. He was still building kits and whistling his heart out when Gail and I went to sleep."

In the 50s John Allen began the creation of the Gorre & Daphetid Railroad which became what is still probably the most famous of all HO layouts ever created. Almost monthly there were new article about his phenomenal scenery with mountains and trestles and his hand made cars and structures. There is still today a very active group of John Allen fans who continue to reminisce over his greatness.

My next and one of the most memorable train events was going to Durango one week-end while my Dad was teaching summer session at the University of Colorado. The narrow guage passenger winds slowly up and down the Animas River canyon from Durango to Silverton whistling and blowing smoke and cinders through the valley air all the way. It is one of the most magnificent train rides and I will return someday with my grandsons to do it again.

I remember riding the Sante Fe from Lawrence home to New Mexico my freshman year at K.U.

and I also remember riding the Sante Fe home from Northwestern Medical School to New Mexico for Christmas break. Later in medical school after getting married I began doing some kit construction of HO structures without having any layout to put them on.

After Michael A. got to the appropriate age, I built an HO layout that folded up onto the wall of his room and had storage for the cars and engines on shelves on the enclosed wall. And as we speak, I have purchased a beginners HO set which is hidden in the closet for the appropriate Christmas for the grandsons.

One of my favorite C & W artists is Merle Haggard and he recorded an album called "My Love Affair with Trains". Hence the title for this segment.

http://trainweb.org/rwy/mh-NoMoreTrainsToRide.mp3

~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

For anyone who has followed Merle Haggard's career over the decades, train and hobo songs seem to be recurrent in his work, no matter which decade -- or century -- he recorded in. My Love Affair With Trains is one of the last two records Haggard cut for Capitol in 1975. It is also is one of Haggard's trademark concept albums, upon which he pays tribute to and laments the railroads' decline as a centerpiece of American life. Haggard has made a life in music of charting the previous and its decline in the present. In between each track, Hag introduces the next, as these songs cover different historical eras. There's the stunning title track written by Dolly Parton; Stephen H. Lemberg's corny but nonetheless compelling "Here Comes the Freedom Train"; Mark Yeary's "I Won't Give up My Train," which he re-recorded later for MCA; Dave Kirby's "So Long Train Whistle" and "Where Have All the Hobos Gone"; as well as "The Hobo." It isn't only in the songs that Haggard chronicles the romance and decline of the American railroad; the grain of his voice is a lament, full of mourning and a genuine bittersweet grief -- Haggard grew up on the rail lines as his father worked them. Interestingly enough, the tune of Haggard's to appear here is "No More Trains to Ride"; he introduces it with a short reflection on how it had become damn near impossible to hop a freight to ride coast to coast. The oddest inclusion here is the Jerry Jeff Walker/Jimmy Buffett collaboration "Railroad Lady." Hag justifies its inclusion by saying it was stories like this that helped further the legend of the great Black Iron Horse. As Haggard's records go, My Love Affair With Trains may seem a bit quaint in retrospect, but its soul and emotion don't date. There is great truth in his performances of these songs, and like virtually everything he records, he tells the truth through these songs as he sees it.