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This fictional book is based on the real friendship that developed between a black railroad section hand and a white college student who became a section hand for a while. Some pathos, some humor, some heartbreak.
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This fictional book is based on the real friendship that developed between a black railroad section hand and a white college student who became a section hand for a while. Some pathos, some humor, some heartbreak.
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About the AuthorWes Sumpter served in the US Navy in WWII and Korea. He retired from the US National Guard and married his wife, Carolyn, in 1950. They have seven children. Wes retired from teaching in 1990.
Sample ExcerptsChapter VI: Floren Kicks The Pot and Korea Happens It was getting toward late June and it was starting to warm up like it can in Kansas. The creosote wasn't bubbling in the ties yet, but you could break a pretty good sweat by eight o'clock.
We were working in a long fill just west of Lomax, and the company had had to fill a stretch about three hundred yards long to keep the track bed level, and it was a pretty steep grade on the south side. We were glad to the have the crane working for a change, as there were five of the replacement rails that had rolled down the side of the bank. We couldn't get the whole stretch done in one day, but we took out about half of it to replace. We were in a stretch of track where a lot of ties had been replaced within the past five years so we only had to replace about a fourth of the ties.
Running the clamp end of the cable on the crane was considered a good deal by some of the crew so Nails passed that job around each time. All you had to do was put the clamp in the middle of the rail and when the operator lifted if off the ground you just guided it so it would lay on the ties snugged up against the last rail. It was kind of a break in spiking.
A big kid named Floren was the lucky clamp man this day. Everything was working great, and we were all hoping the crane would keep functioning. We had two of the tracks out of the weeds, spiked down and just one more to go in this stretch. Maybe it would even work tomorrow so we wouldn't have to wrestle the last two up the bank. The river angled back within twenty-five or thirty feet of the track of our next keester target. We wanted to make that.
Floren took the clamp and pulled the cable off the crane drum as he went to put the last rail for the day up on the track bed. Two very unlikely subjects made their appearance at the same time, and you wouldn't often find either one of them in that area. The first thing was an old container politely called a bedchamber. A more vulgar term was piss pot. Maybe someone had thrown it out of a passenger train car that had once run on this line. I don't know how it got there. It was just there, and it had been there for some time. It was lying tilted on its top. I don't know why Floren thought he should kick it over either, but he did. The only rattlesnake we saw anytime was coiled in the shade of the pot. It was a small snake, probably a little prairie rattler, but his dry rustling rattle couldn't be mistaken. Floren threw the clamp and let out a banshee scream as he raced up the bank. The dirt and ballast were thrown back as he scrambled to get on the track bed.
When everything quieted down nobody wanted to be the clamp man any more. All of the gandys were razzing Floren with remarks like, "You damn near turned clear white." "You just about as white as Bobby-Sam." but from that time on the clamp man was Little Sam, Tom or Old Lightning. I don't think any of these three were afraid of snakes or anything else. From what I found out later about them, they had pretty well had to stand up to some pretty fearsome events in their lives.
The snake slowed us down very little, and we managed to make our keester goal before Friday noon. Everybody had their "dolla". Tom and Ray got the goodies, and we sat in the trees (out of sight of Mr. Mo Pac), and guzzled our beer and gobbled our "donkey dick" sandwiches and chips. This was probably our second best keester because Old Lightning introduced us to an activity that was as much fun as horse. He showed us the art of "noodling" or hand fishing, the way they used to do it down on the "Ol' Missip." I didn't believe it would work until he went back under a brush pile and came out with a flathead catfish weighing probably ten pounds. That set us off!! After we had missed several chances because of getting too eager the rest of us began to pull some more fish from under the cut banks and brush piles. All together we caught eighteen fish from about three pounds to one about fifteen pounds. Nails said, "Let's clean these cats here, and take 'em in and have a fish fry." It didn't take long to get the fish skinned and gutted. There were several big skillets in camp and, and each hut had a coal-oil stove in it.
Nails relaxed the no beer rule for this one time only, and we had the damndest fish fry I ever saw.
There was one dark part of the day. On June 25th, 1950, North Korea (Pushed by Russia) attacked South Korea, and the U.S. was at war because we had a few troops stationed in South Korea. Tom and Ray had found that out when they went after the beer.
A few of us had already been "in the shit" before, and we realized what a bad deal it was. Nobody really knows how bad war stinks unless they a have been "in the shit." We were all talking about Korea. "Where the hell is Korea?" Happy Kat claimed it was in Africa, and Walkin' Sam said, "You a dumb nigger, Korea is by Italy." Tom said, "Tell them where Korea is, Wayne man." I told them I'd bring a world map from home Monday, and they could see where it was. It sounds impossible, perhaps, that the poor uneducated guys didn't know a fact like that. What's worse, though, I could take you to a lot of so-called "educated" people today who couldn't show you Korea on an unmarked map.
Tom, Little Sam, a couple of guys from Demus, and Bob and I had been in the service. Walkin' Sam said, "I'm not going anymore to fight the white mans war again." I was about fed up with his mumbled snide remarks about the "white mans." I asked him where he served, and he said, "In the army." I asked him, "What division?" He said, "I don't know any division-just in the army." I asked him what his M.O.S. was , and he said, "I don't know any damn M.O.S., just in the army." I asked him more about where he served and any battles he was in. He didn't have a clue. Finally Little Sam said, "Shit! Wayne man, don't waste your time, he's a damn liar." Walkin' Sam slunk off out to the privies. Good Sam sure had the asshole Sam's number.
You should be able to order the book through the Trafford Publishing web site.
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