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September 1923 my family came to
Kerrville
from White Bluff,
Tennessee. They
sold out, as my father said, “Lock, stock
and barrel” and boarded the
Nashville,
Chattanooga and
St. Louis train
headed for the Texas Hill Country.
My grandmother, grandfather, two uncles and
my father headed west by rail to
Memphis
and from there to San
Antonio. Three days
later, they arrived in
San Antonio. Their
destination was Comfort – because “it
sounded good.” So they took the S.A. & A.P.
train to Comfort. My grandfather got off
the train at that town and looked around.
He asked the conductor if there was another
town up the line. Of course, the conductor
told him that Kerrville
was the end of the line. So destiny
manifested itself.
Upon arrival in
Kerrville, my family
was met by a “goodly number” of people,
which was the custom in those days. My
family of 5 crowded into a Red Bird Overland
touring car that served as a taxi and went
over to the Stegall Hotel where they checked
in at 616 Main Street. They rented a house
from Dr. Domingues until my grandfather
could build their new home. My father was
10 years old at that time.
I have vivid memories of THE TRAIN in
Kerrville. The
transit of the train seemed to be a big
event. Standing on and crossing the tracks
always offered an element of suspense as to
when exactly the train would pass by. The
marvelous nature of the train to
Kerrville is that it
passed right through the town. Many of
Kerrville’s kids
amused themselves by putting pennies on the
tracks. For whatever reasons, they
gradually increased the size of the objects,
as they got older. This practice usually
came to a sudden stop when their car or
bicycle was actually run over by the train.
It happened. Oh, but not to me – it was
someone I knew.
It is an old memory, but I think I can
remember the route that this train took. I
know that it ran alongside the old highway
to San Antonio,
coming into town out by Legion, passing by
Mosty’s Nursery and then Schreiner
Institute. From there it made its way up to
Tivy
High School (The Hut) and thence
westward into town, sorta paralleling
Main Street
which was but a few blocks south.
The old train terminal along
Sidney Baker Street
must be where my family landed. Is this the
original location? I remember eating at a
restaurant in that building in the late
1970s. There was a lot of shrimp piled on
an old newspaper.
But all this was not the big deal with the
train. The BIG DEAL was turning the
locomotive around. Oh fatuous joy! It was a
very slow moving train and upon hearing its
whistle one could scurry, over to the place
where the tracks ended, to meet it. A crowd
of kids always gathered around the medieval
wooden mechanism to turn the locomotive
around, so it could push its cars back to
San Antonio.
Over by the former location of the wool and
mohair warehouse that spectacularly burned
down about that time, the locomotive
turntable was to be found somewhere around
McFarland and Hays Streets.
Looking like a medieval siege machine, the
turntable squatted upon its dark stained
timbers, oozing creosote oil and axle
grease. I was so small and the mechanism
seemed so huge. Without explanation, there
was some genetic memory at work there. It
felt not only pleasing, but also somehow
appropriate that I reached out and put my
hands on that primitive machine and pushed
until the locomotive had been turned around
180 degrees.
When the locomotive was isolated from the
train, it chugged onto the turntable and sat
quietly doing its mechanical things. As if
by a war signal, we charged the turntable
and grabbed onto one of the many shafts or
spokes that radiated from it. Imagine the
thrill – the crowd, the immensity of the
locomotive and the ancient genius of the
wooden turntable. It was another age – it
had to be Roman in its engineering. SQPR.
I was struggling, not for the glory of
Rome, but for the
glory of Kerrville.
It was a great effort for a small boy to
push that locomotive around. The older boys
took up the strain – my problem was keeping
my hands on the spoke shaft and my feet on
the ground at the same time. It was my
first real team time. Surprisingly, I
remember the swivel as easy, but then I
didn’t have to shove very hard - and there
was a lot of grease and oil on the ancient
mechanism. It was soon headed back towards
the east from whence it had come.
On the railway siding, boxcars were culled
out for unloading shipments to
Kerrville
businesses. Among these was always a boxcar
for the Schreiner stores. My Uncle Leland
worked at the Schreiner Feed Store. It was
his job to take an old truck to the siding
and collect their boxcar. The truck was an
old Reo with hard rubber tires. Uncle
Leland would hook the boxcar to the back of
the truck and head back down the street to
the feed store. He put the truck in low
gear and set the throttle at low speed.
Then he drove down the railroad tracks on
Sidney Baker Street
towards the warehouse.
It was a parade of sorts, as small children
would follow him on bicycles. Adults would
wave and jokingly blow their horns as he
passed by at walking speed. As long as I
can remember it was his big act. He got out
of the moving truck and walked in front of
it – beckoning it to hurry up. He paraded
those few blocks from the train siding to
the warehouse as a weekly event for many
years. Once Tex Ritter rode his horse
alongside the truck down to
Main Street. It
was a happy time.
On one magic day, my father “convinced” the
conductor to let us ride in the caboose out
to Legion. You know, of course, I had a toy
electric train in the closet, all the really
fancy train equipment I inherited from my
late Uncle Frank. I had lived for this
moment.
My Dad heaved me onto the caboose step. I
hung on for dear life as we lurched away
from the station. Off we went, past your
backyards and gardens, it was a view of
Kerrville
I would never see from an automobile. We
soon passed by the High School, rumbled over
a creek or two, gained speed as we passed
Schreiner Institute and soon creaked to a
stop at Legion. To this very day, I ride a
train when and where I have the
opportunity.
Anyone who played football at Tivy High in
1960 will remember when the coaches had this
great idea of how we could stay in condition
during the off season. We all had to go out
for track. I was singled out to pole vault
– which is a dismal story. Since there was
no real track at the High School, we had to
workout and practice at Schreiner. So we
would suit up at the Tivy gym, putting on
those sweat suits and ridiculous little
rubber ballerina shoes that runners wore in
those days.
Then – oh excess – we walked over to the
railway tracks and took off for Schreiner.
How far is that? We were supposed to run
all the way from Tivy Hut to the Schreiner
Institute gym. Some of my pals like Hobo
Holton, Tooter Bowlin, Gilbert Rowe, Bill
Matthews, Al Daves and Kenny Sincleair,
would sprint out there. Others of us,
mostly the interior linemen, walked slowly
so as to not chaff our inner thighs, which
were highly developed by weight lifting. (mmmmm)
Day after day, five days a week during the
Spring, we would play our part in this
migration on the train tracks. We became
adept at walking the rails and tiptoeing
over the bridges – one foot daintily on each
railway tie as we went slowly and
painstakingly over the abyss.
On just one occasion, the train suddenly
appeared as we crossed the bridge. While
some lesser mortals fled, some close cronies
and I chose to climb down into the
superstructure of the bridge and ride it
out. Glee turned to grim grit, which turned
to pillar-clutching panic. You cannot
possibly imagine how big and how long a
train is until you are under it. The
locomotive and car after car passed within
what seemed inches of my cringing head. Its
multifarious black mass steamed, leaked,
whistled, groaned, hissed and made terrible
squealing sounds as it passed over our
heads. The bridge supports actually moved,
swaying with the weight. The bridge itself
began to make resonant noises. My enduring
sense of fatalistic catastrophism was born
that day.
What happened to that train? It must have
just passed away, as have many rudiments of
our times of yore in
Kerrville. I never
saw it leave. Was there a crowd? Did they
turn it around one last time, or did the
locomotive just back its way out of our
lives?
Somehow, that train took my boyhood away
with it. Did it whistle?
Joseph Luther
Copyright © 2004
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