On Time

by Paul Kozerski

  Along the way, Mom too, had assisted. She steamed and bent the particular struts requiring curved forms, helping spray, stretch, and dope the tissue paper fuselage skin tautly into place. And when the craft finally launched on its maiden flight, the brothers stood side by side, proud and Wright-like, watching their creation grace the sky with its homemade magnificence.

  There’d been shares of mischief, as well. Against their dad’s knowledge and stern warnings to the contrary, the pair had sneaked up to set washers on the outside mainline as an initiation to their private, two-man club. After the next train’s passing, they retrieved the peened amulets for addition to a cigar box memorabilia collection. Along with fool’s gold crystals, pressed four-leaf clovers, and crosstie date nails, all were signs of their Graczyk solidarity.

  Jim winced, recalling the time they had gathered up a couple dozen half-used railroad fusees. Squeezing all of the yellow chemical powder into an old coffee can, they’d then sneaked their incendiary booty to the believed sanctity of the basement. There, the boys being boys, tempted fate by an irrational tossing of lit matches into the can.

  One inevitably took hold and the three pounds of flammable concoction went off like a rocket motor. The can melted away before them in a gush of stark crimson light. It scorched the very cement floor, flooding the entire house with blue smoke and choking sulfur fumes, while still in the bitter depths of February.

  Their mom first checked that her sons hadn’t been hurt. She then hustled about with them, opening every window and door to the frigid winter. Her efficiency saved the day and the last bits of foul stink drifted off just minutes before their dad got home from yet another exhausting road trip.

  The brothers knew they deserved a good butt-whipping. But, instead of tattling and punishing, Sarah Graczyk ended the matter with a rigid index finger, shaken firmly against any further such devilment. She then concealed the incident from her husband. To this day, his dad still hadn’t learned of the episode, making Jim treasure the woman even more.

  One special shared occurrence came about on a rainy summer afternoon. Bored and rummaging through the attic, the boys discovered their father’s then, quarter-century-old, woolen Marine dress uniform. Gathering dust in a zippered bag, they felt obliged to try it on.

  The old material reeked of age and the pungent chemical mothballs stuffed about its decrepit pockets. Still, they modeled it and their dad’s wide campaign hat, giggling themselves silly, while standing at a gangly attention, trying to salute with arms stuffed in the coat’s too-long sleeves.

  All just harmless fun. But, it was when returning the uniform to its hanger, that Jim saw a glint of special light flare in his older brother’s eyes. Mike was giving the tired fabric a last straightening tug when the moment occurred and he might not have even realized the change of mood in himself. But Jim had and he knew from that instant on, that the time would come, when his older brother would someday wear an Eagle, Globe, and Anchor of his own.

  Together, the boys learned to raise pigeons and worked to master the finesse of knuckle ball throwing. They’d built snow forts and soap box racers, sharing in all that made them brothers - Jim’s covert, future love of one woman being the only thing that might’ve ever faced them off.

  All those visions scattered as the attic door creaked open, below. With it came the measured and resolute pace of his father’s upward steps. It was unusual for the man to not just whistle in shrill reveille, prior to an awaiting task and Jim long knew that any personal appearance only meant some order of sober family business. Certain this bout regarded the new round of upcoming road crew exams, he braced and waited as Joe came to rest in the bedroom doorframe.

  Today, just his hovering presence set an intimidating stage. The bull chest and heavy-veined, battering ram arms strained through his shirt. His skin, seared beyond brown from all the exposure to scorching coal fires, seemed even darker - enough to reduce and dim his ancient forearm tattoo.

  Joe stood silent a time. Ringed in their spray of hardcore crow’s feet, his dark eyes rested gravely on Jim.

  “It’s nearly nine. You planning to sleep all day?”

  His tone as well, was less than cordial. But, Jim clung to the last of his contented smile.

  “No. It just felt good, staying here a little longer, today. I’ve got nothing special planned, other than maybe some softball, this afternoon.”

  “What about helping to scrape and repaint those basement steps?”

  The chore’s reference seemed merely some kind of preamble. But, Jim nodded at its mention.

  “Sure. I don’t remember any talk of exactly when you wanted it done. But, that can be today.”

  Then came the bombshell and true order of business.

  “You got some mail.”

  Joe extended his mitt-like hand. With it came a brusque, personal delivery of the thick envelope he’d just plucked from their mailbox. Its address was folded inward and obscured during the transfer. But, the stiff, coiled packet sprang as wide as a jack-in-the-box and there was no hiding the proud, Electric Engine Company, logo branded across its front.

  Jim had nearly forgotten sending off for the information a few weeks prior and cringed at its unbelievably poor sense of arrival, today. He could only try minimizing the packet by putting it aside in a manner of deferred business. Yet, Joe kept it in his sights, like a poisonous snake on the loose. When he spoke next, his face was a portrait of contempt.

  “What do you need from them?”

  Father and son matched an estranged look.

  “I don’t need anything,” Jim replied. “Just wanted some information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  To keep the peace Jim silently averted the man’s gaze. But not answering wasn’t an option.

  “I asked you a question, mister.”

  The serene bedroom air grated with a quick static. It flashed Jim back to the same iciness he’d felt on that not-too-distant day, when an olive green government sedan had pulled to the curb, disgorging its pair of solemn Marine sergeants.

  He now squared his shoulders and spoke in earnest.

  “It’s general stuff on the company.”

  “And why would a guy need that,” asked Joe, “unless he was writing a book report – or, thinking of a job there?”

  Jim was honest.

  “Work there could always be a chance.”

  “Why? You’ve already got a job; one with the same company that’s been damn good to you for your whole life. The one that always put food on your table in bad times and kept you warm and dry, while others did without. Don’t you owe it something back?”

  The familiar prelude spoke volumes. Another road fireman’s exam was in the works. Well knowing he had no way to avoid the matter, Jim drew a dispassionate breath and prepared to ride out this newest storm.

  “I won’t deny it’s been good to me, Pa. But until just recently, it was you and your job that provided those things - as a man should for his family.”

  The logic only served to sharpen Joe’s tone.

  “Yeah, okay. And they went out of their way to also take you on, when there’s plenty of other guys out there wanting in. Don’t you have any sense of loyalty to them for it - or ambition to better yourself?

  “A half dozen younger men than you have come and gone, to road crewing in the three years you’ve been on the payroll. And you’re still a yard pin puller. That’s a job for beginners or whiskered trainmen, finishing off their time, not able-bodied guys in their prime.”

  Jim let the man finish, then dared speak his mind.

  “Pa, I went to the road because it was set in your thinking that’s where I belonged. So, there is where I work. But I don’t care for a job that would take me away from home so much. I like living in my own town and sleeping in my own bed and I see the switchyard job as the best option for me.”
/>   Joe was incredulous.

  “Sleeping in your own bed? Who doesn’t want to work the home rails? But, you’ve got to pay your dues first and road service is part of all trainmen doing just that. Same as anybody worth their salt does. What’s wrong with you?”

  Jim met his father’s eyes.

  “Nothing’s wrong with me, Pa. The truth is, I just don’t have the same love of the road like you do - or Mike did.”

  Joe mouthed the word like an obscenity.

  “Love? Whoever said that I started there because I loved it? We work because we need to live. No one said jobs are supposed to make us happy. They keep us fed and pay our bills. And that makes us responsible.”

  There, Jim offered an agreeing rock of his head.

  “And, couldn’t EEC do that for someone like me, just as well? They’ve got so much work coming in that they’re always hiring at Stafford. Right now, they have openings for machinists and assemblers. From there, a guy like me could learn a real craft or skill, like wiring or hydraulics. Eventually, maybe even drafting work. Or more.”

  For the first time, his father didn’t respond and Jim grabbed at the moment, hoping to establish a rare point of détente.

  “Orders are so heavy for new diesel power that they need crews to deliver engines and existing engineers to run training classes. Why, you could get your retirement from the road and start a whole new and heck-of-a-lot easier career with them.”

  Joe took the same harsh stock of his son as he might with a traitor to their very country.

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  Jim patiently considered the man.

  “Because, like it or not, steam power is on the ropes, Pa. Sooner or later the CC&S is going to take the plunge and buy into diesels. They’ve got to. There’s no stopping it and if you face it in working for EEC or in our yard, it’s only a matter of time before something happens that’s really going to change things around here.”

  Change.

  He’d gagged on that word too much today already and now Joe made a stand.

  “That’s it. We’re done pussy-footing around over this. I’ve given you way more time than I ever should have. You can’t make the move on your own? All right, I’ll help you.

  “As long as you’re under my roof, you’ll follow my rules. And on Monday you will go see Boots and sign up for the next road fireman’s exam. No ifs, ands, or buts. Understood?”

  Though phrased as a question, his last word issued in ultimatum and Joe walked off without awaiting a reply.

  That was all. As abruptly as it’d begun, the exchange was over. In its swirling wake, Jim was again, alone. He soberly straightened and regarded the sealed mail pack. Buried among its still unopened pages, he now sensed a lethal shift of his universe.

  CHAPTER 16

  The CC&S was a company well known for its conservative management. As such, it only ever invested in physical assets when actual cash was available. Although this mindset was considered dowdy by high ranked financial institutions, when the balance sheets of the roads about it bounced and heaved, the CC&S had always skirted insolvency.

  That same logic kept the road functioning as a simpler timetable and train order operation, likewise continuing its use of steam locomotives, while more of its counterparts abandoned the proven old technology for expensive investments in so-called centralized traffic control and liquid fuel power.

  But these days found the Chicago, Cahokia, and Southern as one of the last steam strongholds for a Class 1, Midwestern railroad. Coal fired power all about it was being devoured by diesel locomotives and ironically, not only did the Electric Engine Company, as their largest manufacturer, rest almost within earshot of the Mayhew yard, but, many of its material needs continued being delivered by this very road.

  CC&S neighbor, the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy was already out of steam. The Illinois Central had consolidated its thinning engine roster for downstate colliery work. The Chicago and North Western, similarly, had pushed its steamers off of the mainline and up into Wisconsin’s Northwoods country, leaving the Nickel Plate as the CC&S’s only remaining regional, coal burning counterpart.

  The matter had actually begun decades before, with a steam-killing trump card buried in the cultured notion of big city betterment. By the early 1900s, Chicago, the very town which had so embraced and nurtured railroading in its formative years, began finding the iron horse a growing irritation. The community had since developed a genteel social infrastructure and its new metropolitan elite found the clamor and smoke of nearby railroads to be brutish.

  Subsequent, politically-coined terms, like, Lakefront Improvement, and City Beautification, essentially meant that the hardworking smoky mammoths were no longer key to the downtown existence. Also, their dirty yards and stations clogged land that could be put to better use for the construction of even more municipal structures. The soon-to-be-dedicated Prudential Insurance Building was one example. Erected through a sale of Illinois Central air rights, it would unveil shortly, over the IC’s old, Randolph Street property.

  So opened a practical avenue for alternate locomotive power.

  In truth, inventors had tinkered with petrol and electric prime movers since the inception of both. Smalltime locomotives of each type had actually been functional for over 30 years. But, battery powered systems were of limited range and full, midwestern electrification, impractical. Likewise, no pure mechanical drive existed for liquid fuel machines to haul serious tonnage without direct rail contact shaking loose their very engine components.

  Separately, both kinds of propulsion remained limited to downtown yards. They shuffled along as abject, little boxy things, their featureless exteriors and kitchen-like windows giving an impression of wretched little metal cottages on wheels. Neither seemed more than indignant warts on the noble face of railroading and were easily dismissed.

  With their hybrid merger, though, all limitations fell away. Refinements were quick in coming and the first heavyweight diesel-electric demonstrators marched out to flex their mainline muscles just before World War II.

  Uncle Sam tabled the matter with the arrival of hostilities. In the ruling military mind, diesel engines belonged in things like portable generators and naval support craft. Coal was meant for fueling locomotives and those locomotives were meant to run on steam. The decree, though, proved just a short reprieve. Diesel-electric design work continued on, behind the scenes. And with the armistice its spawn came of age.

  Diesel locomotives did house less raw horsepower than a steamer, sporting a sticker price nearly twice as high. But, they boasted four times the distance between fuel stops and five times the interval between heavy-class repairs. Additionally, their uniform torque characteristics were unhampered by a steamer’s huge, complex, rotating wheel mass, racking up immediate savings in right-of-way maintenance and trestle upkeep.

  American Locomotive, Electro-Motive, Fairbanks-Morse, and the Electric Engine Company assaulted the market with free trials of demonstrator units containing opposed piston, supercharged two-stroke, turbocharged four-cycle, and gas turbine power plants. Still, diehard steam loyalists like the CC&S, ignored all the claims of better traction, greater vertical stability, and lower centers of gravity that enabled diesels to maintain longer trains at higher, safer speeds. Avoiding the fuel oil plunge, they instead, continued ordering brand new steam power.

  Now though, even with their own mines capable of stoking CC&S engines at great cost savings over liquid fuel, the inevitable could no longer be denied. The great, old, steam locomotive manufacturers were up against the wall. Unable to compete, they were shutting down. Spare parts inventories scraped rock bottom in the warehouse circuit and few independent machine shops were capable of fabricating specialized, high dollar prototype replacement items.

  This brought the insistent gentlemen callers back with a vengeance. Their sales forces now
also came armed with an entirely new concept in prime movers; something generically termed the road switcher. And its ability to be used as either a yard goat or mainline runner with equal efficiency, was looming as steam’s knockout punch.

  Nearby EEC’s breakthrough products were simply named the Common Service issue, although their revolutionary CS-10 and CS-15 models were anything but common. Endowed with little in the way of good looks, the hot selling rectangular brutes were all business and proven powerhouses, offering a wallop of solid muscle and all-weather reliability. A growing rumor also claimed that something even larger, called the Special Service issue, would soon be rolling off the company’s erecting floors.

  CHAPTER 17

  DeLynne Leplak sat at his yard office desk and finished thumbing through some new locomotive sales brochures. He placed the glossy copies back inside a drawer, stroking their cover art a last time. His glance about the yards beyond brought a bitter smile to the recent Mayhew transplant.

  “Get ready boys.” He whispered. “It’s your time.”

  Dee, as he was known to family and a tiny circle of friends, was a new, different type of railroader; book learned and office bound. Not that long ago, this road had been a business which promoted from within. But, tales of men starting out as lowly engine wipers and rising to upper management were being less heard of these days. The time-honored gateway afforded to capable people strictly by experience and personal acuity was forever swinging shut in the face of higher education. And Dee was one of that new breed.

  Possessing a sheepskin didn’t automatically make its owner any brighter or more industrious than their hands-on counterparts. Still, it was a blossoming new currency and slowly eroding the real world path of moving up the ladder by truly earning your stripes. Far worse, was a growing polarization of camps that it brought and a poisoning to the company well of common purpose.

  The most dangerous among the ranks of bureaucratic lapdogs, glory boys, and pure, yes-men, that any company endured, were those white-collared frauds appointed solely by way of family pedigree. Given a token management commission, the corporate nepotist generally embarked on one of two approaches to their employ.