A True Story

It was the Fourth of July, 1976, the day of the bicentennial of the United States. I was working that summer as a truck driver, pulling a forty-foot flatbed trailer around the Midwest trip-leasing loads from place to place, staying out six weeks at a time.

Since I was laid over near Minneapolis for the holiday weekend, I stopped to visit my ex-girlfriend Monica and her husband John Bowman, who lived in the country near South Haven, Minnesota. John was a real wild man; he had hitchhiked and hoboed all around the country, and had a genuine type A personality. I had taken a few short rides on freight trains and really enjoyed John’s stories of riding trains across the country. He told me of a great ride he often took, just a short hop from South Haven to about sixty miles west, where the trains always stopped. From there he would hitchhike back home on the highway that paralleled the tracks.

That afternoon Monica came home from work and mentioned that there was a train on the siding in South Haven, and that we might want to take that short ride and still get home in time to get to St. Cloud for the fireworks show that night. Since it doesn’t get dark there in July until almost 10:00 John and I decided to give it a shot.

When we got to the siding the train was just starting to pull out, and we had to run and jump into an empty box car with the train already moving. Soon we were clipping along at sixty miles an hour, enjoying the warm summer afternoon, waving at kids in cars at crossings and having a great time. John explained that the train would slow down to about twenty miles an hour at the Great Northern Crossing at Belgrade, then after about thirty more miles at top speed would stop at Glenwood, where we would disembark and hitch a ride home.

Southern Minnesota is beautiful in mid summer. As we sped along through the warm July afternoon, I noticed that at many county road crossings rickety-looking wooden bridges had been built so the road actually passed over the double railroad line, something that I had not seen before, and that would have an impact on me later that evening.

As John had predicted, the train slowed down at the Great Northern Crossing, then increased in speed again. Here it appeared that Union Pacific was replacing ties, because we saw hundreds, maybe thousands of used ties laying along the railroad track. These, too, would come into play later in our ill-fated trip.

An hour or so later the train slowed again, and came to a stop just outside of Glenwood, Minnesota. It was maybe two hours to sunset, so we hopped out of our boxcar, walked over to the highway, and stuck out our thumbs. We figure we had plenty of time to catch a ride back to South Haven and still make it to St. Cloud for the bicentennial fireworks. What we hadn’t counted on was that late in the afternoon on the Fourth of July there was very little traffic, and the few cars that did pass by we’re filled with tourist families that were not very likely to pick up a couple of scroungy hitchhikers.

After standing with our thumbs out for 45 minutes or so we could see that hitching a ride on the highway wasn’t going to work, so we began to eye the train that was idling on the eastbound track. I had the idea that maybe if we asked nicely the train crew might give us a ride and drop us off at South Haven. As we walked up to the lead locomotive, the engineer, who had observed us standing on the shoulder of the highway with our thumbsout, came out on the catwalk and said “Boys, you’re welcome to ride my train but I only have three empty cars and they are flatcars, the seventh, eighth, and ninth cars on the train”. We asked him about stopping at South Haven but he said that was out of the question, however we might be able to jump off when the train slowed for the Great Northern crossing. That sounded good to us because it was close enough to South Haven that if we could find a phone we might get Monica to come pick us up.

We had only just climbed up onto the first flatcar when the train began to roll. Before long we were clipping along through the gathering dusk. At that latitude, even in July, when the sun goes down it really begins to cool off, and we were wearing T-shirts, which meant we weren’t having quite as much fun as we had when we started out that afternoon. About the time it was getting pretty dark the train began to slow for the Great Northern crossing. I jumped over to the grain car ahead of us and got down on the ladder on the side of the car, while John got on the ladder of the flatcar. The train slowed to maybe twenty miles an hour, and as we peered into the darkness we remembered that earlier that day we had passed miles of railroad ties laid in the weeds along the track. To get off of the train at that speed would mean hitting the ground at a dead run, and running into a bunch of hidden ties would probably mean a broken leg or worse. As we hung there trying to work up the nerve to jump, the train started to pick up speed and we knew there was no getting off now. This meant a frigid three-hour ride into Minneapolis.

The grain car in front of us had a little cubbyhole in the back that was out of the wind, but years before John had fallen between two hay wagons and had a personal rule that he would never jump from one moving car to another. I could see that we were in for a very uncomfortable ride, so the idea came to me that if I could make my way up to the lead locomotive I might be able to persuade the engineer to stop, or at least slow down at South Haven so we could get off the train.

I jumped back across to the grain car and climbed up the ladder to the roof. Crouching low I made my way forty feet to the front of the car, walking on the removable fiberglass panels that cover the three-foot wide slot that runs the length of a grain rail car. At the front of the car I surveyed the distance to the next car, which was also a grain car. It looked to be about a six or seven-foot gap. I moved back down the car a ways, then ran as fast as I could and leapt to the next car, where I plastered myself to the roof. Success! Since I hadn’t fallen between the cars and been crushed under the wheels, I started feeling pretty hopeful that I might actually pull this crazy caper off. I got up and ran the length of the car and made the leap to the next car without even slowing down. Peering ahead through the darkness I could see four or five more cars, then the three big diesel locomotives pulling the train. I could hardly imagine the reception I would get when I strolled in the door of the lead locomotive, but I decided to get moving. Running as fast as I could on top of the swaying train, I jumped the gap on the next three cars without slowing down. Now there was only one more car between me and the locomotives.

What I saw now is that the last obstacle between me and the engines was a tank car with a rounded top, and no catwalk on top. I looked down on each side and saw that there was no catwalk along the sides of the car, either. It only took a moment for me to realize that this whole dangerous adventure had been for nothing. I immediately turned around and started making my way back down the train. After just a few steps I remembered that earlier that day I had seen those rickety-looking bridges where county roads crossed the tracks. Now that I had my back turned to the front of the train I was afraid that one of those bridges would come along unseen and put a sudden end to this story. So at the front of each car I would peer ahead at the sweeping headlight of the train, make sure no bridge was looming up, then run like crazy and leap to the next car. There I would look ahead again and make another run. All this was done on a train traveling at sixty miles an hour in near total darkness.

Eventually I made it back to John on the flatcar. We sat hugging each other for warmth and rode that train into the Minneapolis train yards around midnight, then made our way through a bad part of town until we found a pay phone. Monica was so mad about missing the fireworks that she refused to come pick us up, so we spent the night in a sleazy motel in the ghetto. The next morning we hitchhiked back to South Haven. Unbelievable as this story seems, it really is true. Looking back now after nearly forty years I realize what a dangerous stunt it was, and how lucky I am to have done it without getting myself killed. Now, when watching a movie, I see stunt men running along on the tops of trains, I can say “I did that!”.

 

The Gazebo

August 6, 2019: Today we started tearing down the old gazebo that I built years ago. It has an interesting history. This should probably be part of the post titled “Water”, but let’s let it be a separate story. In 1980, after several years of carrying water from the spring and pond and the hottest summer on record, we decided to invest in a well.
We had a well driller come out and drill a hole in the field about 50 yards south of the hogan. At 90 feet he hit what the driller thought was a fair stream of water; he stopped drilling at 105 feet, and the well filled to about 60 feet from the surface. I built a tripod over the new well and bought a well bucket, a long metal tube with a check valve in the bottom, capable of holding a couple of gallons of water. It was a lot of work pulling 16 lbs of water straight up 60 feet. Before long I bought and installed a good old pump jack, that classic iron pump with the long curved handle, attached to enough 1-1/2” galvanized pipe to go almost to the bottom of the well. At the lower end of that pipe is a brass cylinder containing the pump mechanism, worked by a 3/8-inch steel sucker rod that runs in the pipe and is attached to the handle. It was still was a lot of work. Each morning I would fill two five-gallon buckets of water and carry them to the cabin. That is when I decided to build a wash house and canning kitchen next to the well.
Somewhere I managed to scrounge a section of a large treated power pole, which I took to the local sawmiller, Mr. Peachee. I asked him to rip it into four equal pieces, which I used for the four corner posts. I had always admired old houses with a four-sided

The Gazebo

pyramidal roof, so I framed the roof that way. Since I had more time than money, I cut a big red oak tree and rived shingles for the roofing. In this 10X10 building we had a sink, an old three-burner gas range, a wood burning water heater, and a neat old Maytag ringer washing machine powered by a two-cylinder two-cycle gas engine. I built a 10-foot water tower next to the gazebo that supported two 55-gallon barrels, and found a gadget called a pump jack that used the power of a 5 horsepower gas engine to work the sucker-rod pump, and plumbed the barrels to the water heater.
We were in high cotton now! No more trips to the laundromat, no more canning in the hot cabin in the summertime. I still had to carry water to the hogan from the well, but at least I had a gasoline engine to pump the water for us. The weak part of the whole thing was the well. At best I could only get 25 gallons of water per day, and the water had a lot of iron in it, so much that the first five gallons, which came from the bottom of the well, looked like orange juice. I found that if I threw a handful of lime into a barrel of water it would precipitate the iron to the bottom, leaving the water crystal clear. All this time we continued to carry our drinking water from the spring. We used the gazebo this way for ten years. When we moved into our new log house in 1990 we had running water from the cistern under the house, and an electric washing machine in the cellar, so the gazebo was no longer needed. Not only that, it was in the way of the new barn I wanted to build. I hatched a plan to move the gazebo to a place north of the new house and use it as a storage shed.
I borrowed a flat-bed trailer and a couple of jacks. Using those two jacks plus a couple of my own, I jacked the gazebo up until I could back the trailer under it, then lowered it onto the trailer and carefully moved it about one hundred yards through the woods to its new spot, which was on a fairly steep slope. There I carefully jacked it back up to a level position and laid rock pillars up under the corner posts. It was really tricky doing all this without the whole thing falling over. Had that happened I would have had to just scrap the whole thing out, if I wasn’t crushed underneath it!

Moving day

The Gazebo has been there now for almost thirty years, storing all sorts of things that I didn’t really need. Now the oak shingles are deteriorating, and since I don’t really need the building anyway, Maria has talked me into removing it. Other than the log chicken coop, this is the last of the buildings I originally built on this place. I really hate to see it go.
November 11, 2019—News Flash! After taking the siding off the Gazebo, and removing the floor, I got to looking at that pyramid roof and just couldn’t bring myself to tear it all down. Last winter I built a funky and what I consider ugly shed to keep our firewood in the dry. It’s too small, anyway, so I decided to move the Gazebo again, about twenty feet uphill and then ten more to the south, next to the ugly woodshed, which when empty next spring I will tear down. When my pal Bob visited last month we X-braced the building on all four sides and set the front posts on greased 2X10’s. Then I picked the lower end up with my tractor and carefully slid it up the hill, then over to its new resting place. There it will shelter my motorcycle and lawn mower until I cut my firewood in February, when it will become the new woodshed.

Music

During my brief college experience in Minnesota in 1969 I got to know a fellow named Richard George who was a pretty fair guitar player.  I expressed an interest so we went down to the pawn shop and bought an old “beater”.  Richard showed me a few chords and soon I had learned everybody’s first song back in those days, “The House of the Rising Sun”.That song and maybe a few others were about all I knew when I moved to Arkansas in 1972.  Some friends that I stayed with for a while had the Will the Circle be Unbroken album by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and it changed my life.  I had never listened to Country or Bluegrass or Old-Time music until then.  I had never even heard of Doc Watson!

My friends who lived at Fox took me to the Saturday night musical at the home of Lonnie and Neda Merle Lee.  Lonnie was a sawmiller by trade who loved to play music, and every Saturday night he opened his home to anyone who wanted to come.  On any Saturday there would be Uncle Fate Morrison and his grandson Ricky with their fiddles, a couple of banjo players, guitars, dulcimer, mandolins.  They would push back the furniture and the kids would get up a square dance.  It astonished me.  What I was seeing was the last of something that at one time happened in some form in nearly every community across the country before the advent of radio, and especially television; from a time when if you wanted to hear music you had to be where it was being played.

Every Saturday I would drive thirty miles of rough gravel roads down through the Ozark National Forest to soak up the music at Lonnie’s, sleep in my truck in my friends yard, then drive back to Culp where I would spend the week practicing what I had learned.  Later, after I moved to Fox, I bought an old tater-bug mandolin, and finally picked up the fiddle.  I’m proud to have been in on the last days of the Lonnie Lee musicals.  I’m afraid they went the way of all such events, as folks got paying music jobs at venues like The Ozark Folk Center—myself included.

It seems like a lot of the friends I made here in Stone County also loved to play music.  A group of us would gather every Wednesday night at someone’s house for what we called “The Wednesday Night Musical”.  

In 1977 I opened a leather shop on the craft grounds at the Folk Center, and was asked to perform on the nighttime shows.  This was the first time I had sung into a microphone, and it was terrifying!  But I found that I could really fine-tune my voice by listening to the monitors, so it helped me with my singing.  At this time I learned a lot of songs, mostly songs written before 1941 so they would meet Folk Center guidelines.  I also became a square dancer and square dance caller in the style of Kermit Taylor, a local caller.

In the 1980’s I started working with a couple from Clinton, Arkansas, Jon Crabbe and Janis Duley.  They had written a play, “Stories are for Tellin’”, based on folklore collected in the Ozarks in the early 20th century by folklorist Vance Randolph.  Jon and Janis played guitar and sang, I added my vocals as well as guitar, banjo, fiddle and button accordion.  We did the show several nights a week in a huge shelter cave called “The Indian Rockhouse” in Fairfield Bay, Arkansas, which we decked out with stage lights and church pews for the audience.  We put on this show, and several others, each summer for four years.  Maria ran the lights and sound, so we were able to work together.  This was the same time we were building our house.  We would get up in the morning, milk the cow, work on the house all day, then milk again, shower and eat, then drive 25 miles to Fairfield bay to do the show.  We’d get home about 10:30 PM and next morning do it all again.  On nights we didn’t do that show we were generally scheduled to work at the Folk Center.  Those were busy days!

Regulars at the old Wednesday Night Musicals were my friends Robert and Mary Gillihan.  We loved to play music together and our harmonies really clicked.  In 1988 we were asked to represent Arkansas at a travel writers convention in Kansas City,  Our gig went so well that on the way home we decided to become a band.  Mary suggested the name HARMONY.  For over 30 years now we have entertained folks all over Arkansas as well as jobs in many places around the country.  In 1998 we were finalists in A Prairie Home Companions’ “Talent from Towns Under 2000” contest, which took us to Town Hall in Manhattan and a chance to sing onstage with host Garrison Keillor.  We were proud to place as First runner’s-up in the contest.

During this time I was also playing solo at the Folk Center and was fiddler and front man for an Old-Time string band called Bugshuffle, with Joe Jewell, Albee and Cindy Tellone, Dave McKellup and a few others.  Those were great times, playing music with The Bugs.  I dearly love old fiddle tunes!

Another big part of my musical life is The Ozark Folk Festival at Mountain View, which occurs each year in mid-April.  Musician friends from all over the country gather on the porch of the Wildflower Bed and Breakfast for three days of nonstop fiddling.  I look forward to it all year, especially after two years of Covid restrictions.

Over the years I have done some recording; a cassette tape called “Sing me a Song” in 1987 (this was before CD’s), a CD called “Westlin Winds” around 1995, and a CD called “Red Rocking Chair” in 2010.

I am also the host of a radio show called “Ozark Highlands Radio” produced by The Ozark Folk Center, and featuring music and folklore from the OFC.  These days, in my seventies, I still work occasionally with HARMONY, do MC and solo music jobs, and enjoy fiddling with friends in Mountain View.