BURNING CINDERS

          In its Heyday, U.S. 71 Highway connected major cities and small towns from International Falls, Minnesota to the Louisiana Gulf Coast. In the 50’s it ran south out of Kansas City through the village of Holmes Park, then Hickman Mills, Grandview and Belton. Holmes Park and Hickman Mills have been swallowed up by the big city while Grandview and Belton have major business development along their respective exits off Interstate 49. U.S. 71 doesn’t go through town there anymore. The old roads are still there but they have new names; Hickman Mills Drive dead ends at the Grandview boundary only to pick up again as North Scott on the old route through Belton. 

         I was in Belton yesterday. The business community is up to date and it feels like any number of once upon a time, small farm towns gone suburban. The old town part is off the beaten path. Main Street only runs a few blocks, lined with time weathered, stucco or brick facade, two story buildings; some refitted to other purposes than the original. Behind the stores on the north side, an old railroad spur is still in operation. The Belton, Grandview & Kansas City Railroad is a tourist attraction that runs outings on weekends. With an old diesel engine, a flat car with picnic tables, a passenger coach and caboose, you can take your grandkids for an old fashioned train ride or indulge yourself in nostalgia from another day.

         Tucked up against the back walls of the buildings, an old steam engine with its tender and several box cars are on display. The doors on all the cars are padlocked but you can climb on the engine. From a distance the old work horse looked pretty good but up close you can’t help notice there are things, important parts missing. Then there is rust, cancer for all things made of iron. If you don’t keep things cleaned and painted, they die of rust. I climbed everywhere I could, looking for good photographs. Anything made of flat sheet stock had rusted through. The tender had been converted over to a big tank for fuel oil and the guy who did the shoveling had to find another job. I did my best to imagine the rumble under foot, the clack-clack of steel wheels agains the rails and subtle touch on the whistle handle that would give it a church organ sound. It was a stretch, even for an old make-believer like myself. 

         There was an old, creosote, railroad trestle on the road west of our house. It was on high ground with the train passing below, through a cut. Down the track a hundred yards or so, the hill fell away and the train popped back out into the clear. From out house, you could see the smoke and hear the engine before it came into view. My big brother and I spent a lot of time at the trestle. It put the jungle gym at school to shame. You could climb on the timbers, play in the dirt, throw rocks or walk the steel rail. The best place to be when the train came through depended on who you were with and how brave you wanted to be. It was good to be just under the lip at the top, so you could watch the engine coming at you, feel the vibration, see the smoke begin to load up under the bridge. At the last second you could jump up and around the pilings and take shelter on top of the bridge. The smoke and steam were intense and the cinders were real. From the creosote to the smoke, Mom could smell it on us when we got home and we had to convince her that we stayed on top of the trestle. I was there for the last days of steam engines; lucky me. Diesels took over and it was a good thing I suppose. They are stronger, faster, more efficient. But their horns are either on or off. They have no personality, there was never a conversation, no dialogue, no “WOOooo-WOOooo-WOOOOOOO-woo0OOooo”. A good man on the handle could play the steam whistle like a flute I loved trains then and still do. The diesel is as good as it gets now and my ears stay tuned for a far-off diesel horn in the middle of the night. There was a song back in the 90’s by Travis Tritt, Dixie Flyer. I own the first verse, by heart. It gives rhyme and reason to all the times when my mom needed kerosene on a rag to get the creosote off my hands and knees. It went:

Well the first thing I remember

Was the smell of burnin' cinders

And the sound of that old whistle on the wind

I always wondered where the train was goin'

But I never cared at all where it had been.

KING

         In 1997 my dad sold his house and moved to a retirement community. He did so reluctantly but by his own choice. A shuttle service provided transportation locally but he had to find a ride when it came to cross-town travel. More and more frequently his rides were to rub elbows with old friends who had come together to say goodbye to even another old friend whose days had run out. “It’s a hell of a thing,” he would say, “when the only thing you can do for your friends is to die, so they have a reason to get together.” He would smile and we would laugh but the grim reality was unavoidable. I don’t know how many times I heard him say, “The curse of long life is that you lose all of your friends.”

         When my radio woke me up this morning the first sound bite was that B.B. King had died. He had been in Hospice care for several weeks and so it was no surprise. I can’t say he was a friend but I have been smitten by his music for decades. Another Mississippi poor-boy to make a name for himself with his guitar and the blues, B.B. King was a legend in his own time. For a long weekend in 1990, K.C. Blues Fest drew thousands of fans to the Liberty Memorial with several tent venues and a main stage. On Saturday night the main stage belonged to B.B. King. I was with my son and a mutual friend. We thought we would be early and get a good spot for the 9:00 show. Everybody else was early as well and our ‘best spot’ was a couple of hundred feet out on the grass and off to one side. But the music was great as we stood, packed together so tightly you couldn’t walk, only worm your way if you could do that. 

         A woman nearby thought she had been groped, turned and started cursing, shoving the man behind her. Her companion, a very large man, got into the shouting-pushing fray. Somewhere in the exchange we heard something about a gun and, ”Blow your ass away.” It was like reversing poles on a magnet, everybody close enough to understand moved as if sparked by the same nerve. We pressed away from the source, putting the squeeze on everyone around us, leaving them alone on a stage of their own. Three contentious people suddenly decided they didn’t want to be the center of attention and the storm went away as quickly as it had blown up. B.B. kept on singing, playing his legendary guitar ‘Lucille.” All eyes back on the stage and I wondered, ‘How many other little shoving contests were interrupted by better judgement and good music?’ 

         I remember the helicopter crash that took the life of Stevie Ray Vaughn. He was too young to go; too much undone music left undone. I felt like I had lost something. Then Ray Charles died. He was old enough, accomplished enough you could accept that his time had come, but he had to compete with Ronald Reagan who died two days earlier. I felt cheated as the week played out in political rhetoric rather than soulful music. Someone else would take Reagan’s place but who would save us from the blues, with the blues? B.B. was 89. I remember sitting in his blues club in Memphis, eating BBQ ribs, watching the King on the big screen. I was there last November, thinking he will probably not make it back to Beale Street again. Still, I can listen to his music any time I like.

        I have lost a few friends over the years but generally, friends are well and I get from place to place without need of a ride. I don’t feel that old but I understand that it will sneak up on you, and tonight I will go into the city to rub elbows with friends, share wine and cheese over another friend whose days have run out.

PUBLIC EDUCATION

My alarm-radio turns on at 6:00 a.m. on Sunday just like every other day. Of course there are no announcers in the studio at that time, just an engineer and a library full of prerecorded programing. The Sunday schedule begins with a lady poet who interviews other poets and authors who have passed through the city, promoting their books or other writing activities. Sometimes it’s really good stuff, writers who truly have something to say and talk as well as they compose. Then at 6:30 there is a high-minded do-good interview with someone who has a spiritual or humanitarian connection. That program can be interesting as well but in either case, if it is less than stimulating it’s easy to doze off for a while. Either way, I’ll be getting up a little before 7:00. 

This morning the Do-Good humanitarian was a congressman from Ohio who had written a book. I missed the title but their conversation touched on education and the ways we manipulate the process. As a career educator with 30-plus years in the business, I have my own ideas about why and how we school our children. A conversation on public education runs the risks of many irrelevant distractions and I don’t go there often. My nature is to reduce things, to find a common denominator before I plug an idea into an outlet to see if it will buzz. Then a conversation has to unfold from that fundamental truth. That bothers some of my peers as they would like to simply vent their views and move on. 

Concerning education I begin with the ‘Why’. It may seem a waste of time after all, we all know why kids need an education; or do we? When our economy began to shift from agriculture to industry, employers needed literate employees. Public education came about as a matter of national security, to underpin a strong, growing economy. The powers that be certainly did not see it as an egalitarian means of raising the lower class. The importance of the individual, in public education, was not a priority. That is why we have public education. It has a business model, just like any other business. Its product is people who have been trained to meet the needs of a nation, a place that needs minimum wage workers as much as it needs CEO's. 

The idea that public education should stimulate upward, social/economic mobility is relatively new. As much as we like to believe that each child is important as an individual, able to learn and that nothing less is acceptable, children are the raw materials for an academic industry. Every parent whose child goes to a pubic school does so under the illusion that students come first. The power structure and funding methods are still entrenched in the ‘Factory’ model school. You can not meet the particular needs of every child, cost efficiently. People mean well but when it comes down to ‘put up or shut up,’ education is like any other business endeavor: maximize profit and minimize expense. Creating a vehicle for social/economic mobility is not only too expensive but a threat to status quo as well, so we don’t do it. We do a lot of ‘Double Speak’, lip service, run new programs out like model changes at Chevy and Ford but the common denominator is still, money/power. Private schools are expensive but available to people who are willing and able to make that investment in their children. From the bottom up education is about children and possibility. From the top down it is about national security and status quo. Unfortunately for kids, funding and policy come from the top-down. So, as the congressman was babbling about standardized testing and teacher certification I was turning over, closing my eyes. 

TOYS

One long standing, wanna-be wisdom says ‘The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.” The implications are not as gender biased as it would seem. I think we all have a child buried down in the subconscious who would neither grow up nor be left behind. That child benefits from all of our experience without any loss of innocence. So as we grow up to be responsible and productive, the child still gets to weigh in when it comes to toys. I remember in 1979 when I wanted a 10 speed bicycle; I could have settled for the $69 special at Western Auto but I went to a bicycle shop and chose the $220, Volkscycle with aluminum wheels and Shimano components. I took some heat at home but then I spent even more on 10 speeds for the kids. I took them with me on rides and that got me, to some extent, off the hook. Between what you want and what you need, if you listen to the inner child, the responsible adult who knows better will find a way too satisfy both. I listen to the child all the time. He says, “Let’s go.” I say, “Can’t afford it.” Then he says, “Find a way.” I think about it and say, “O.K.” After a while, I figure out a way and we go. My daughter and I are going to float the Grand Canyon in September. You have to schedule with a white water outfitter a year in advance. I can’t afford it but then, I can’t afford not to. “Find a way.” - “O.K.” 

A few years back, I was working/volunteering with the National Parks Service in Alaska. There is a big flea market in Anchorage every Saturday where you can buy any/everything Alaskan and many things you would not expect. I met an old Russian from a village up the Matanuska Valley who was selling old, wind up pocket watches. I looked at them all and chose an Illinois watch that I could afford. He unscrewed the back and we watched the gears and wheels turn and tick. It looked great. He guaranteed it to be in good shape and I took it home. Four months later it stopped working. After a significant investment it was running again, only to break down again. It has 16 jewels, not precision enough to be rated as a “Railroad-grade” watch but a good watch never the less. 

I have a thing about wind up clocks and watches, something to do maybe with the inner child. In ’03 I  bought a chiming mantle clock in Michigan at an antique store. It didn’t work but the price was right. Then I found a real-deal Clock Doctor who gave me the short course in, ‘Investing in old, time pieces.’ Lots of ‘Smithies’ will fix your clock so it runs, at a cheap price. But it’s not a repair, it’s a patch. To get my mantle clock right, it would be $450 plus or minus and he was back logged six months. Six months and $438 later I got my clock back. The clock still runs perfectly. 

Two years ago I was back in Anchorage, the old Russian was still selling watches at the flea market. I told him about the watch he sold me and he asked why I didn't bring it back to him. Long story short, my clock guru convinced me; if you want an old time-piece to work like new, you must find a dedicated watch maker. I was still interested in his watches but I knew they all probably needed work, even it they appeared to be in good condition. This time I chose another Illinois watch, a Bunn Special, 23 jewell, Railroad-grade watch, nearly a hundred years old. It cost more than the one I bought earlier but it was worth it. He guaranteed it, just like the first one but we both knew I’d not bring it back to him if I needed help. As expected, after a couple of months, it stopped. 

I researched on line, found a man in Portland, Oregon who does nothing but restoration of pocket watches. His story sounded much like my clock guy in Kansas City. You don’t find the problem then fix it. You take the watch completely apart, inspect each piece and part, repair or replace any damaged/worn parts and rebuild it from scratch. Another long wait and many dead presidents. Then my Bunn Special came back to me FedEx. It runs perfect, loses or gains a few seconds a week. The designation, ‘Railroad-grade’ was all about accuracy. Different railroads required one particular watch or another for their engineers, conductors and station agents. They needed to know exactly, if a train was ahead of or behind schedule, and by how many minutes/seconds. It was understandably important to know you could reach the next siding before the oncoming train reached you. 

I keep my ‘Bunn Special’ in a little box, beside my computer. I wind it every morning, take it with me occasionally, when I can keep it on its chain in my coat or shirt pocket. It’s almost as much effort to take out my watch as checking my smart phone but it feels oh-so-much better. Across a hundred years, how many railroaders carried this watch? The fact that I don't know the stories this watch could tell, if it could tell, makes my story even richer. My current bicycle is only ten years old but it is all aluminum with 21 speeds and it cost a lot more than my $220 Volkscycle back in ’79. I don’t ride that much now but when I do, we go up and down hills with amazing ease and whatever it cost is worth it. My watch spends most of its time in its box but when I wind it in the morning and don't have to check to know it's on time, money well spent. Men & Boys, the price of their toys: I would rather believe it's good natured ribbing rather than anything mean spirited.