JOHN W. "JACK" BOWMAN |
| VETERAN ENGINEER RETIRED SAT. P.M. THE LEAD BELT NEWS, Friday, December 23, 1932 [Article Contributed by Marvin Ringer, grandson of John W. Bowman]]  [Above photo contributed by Joseph Wilkson. Click HERE to view larger version of this photo.] John
W. Bowman Completed 42 Years and 8 Months Service With Saturday,
December 17, 1932, as the hands of the depot clock pointed toward the hour of 3:30 p.m.,
the echo of a whistled warning sounded by the northbound passenger train to motorists who
might be approaching the highway crossing at the north end of the Bonne Terre yards had
scarcely died among the surrounding hills when engine No. 102, rolling with a grace and
ease which seemed all out of proportion to her ponderous bulk, glided slowly down the
long, sharp hill from the junction and came to a smooth and noiseless stop in front of the
Bonne Terre station with the northbound local. The ceremonies in the car shop were brief and to the point. George M. Spain, a veteran of many years service at Bonne Terre, acted as master of ceremonies, and paid a brief tribute to Engineer Bowman, to conductor Truman Belknap, who had been retired January 10, 1927, following a continuous service as trainman and conductor since October 18, 1886, and to J. F. Kehrman, who was retired three years ago following thirty nine years of service as Master Mechanic, the latter two sharing the ceremonies of Saturday with "Pop" Bowman.
In keeping with the spirit of the occasion, Mr. Spain called only upon veterans of the service, and first of these was M. E. Cloud. Mr. Cloud spoke briefly, telling those present of the many hardships which were everyday occurrences in railroading in the early days of service for those retired veterans, among them being such handicaps as no airbrake and similar improvements which came in later years. John Manwarring was called next in line, and told of getting his first job on the M.R. & B.T. in 1906 from "Pop" Bowman, who was acting as Master Mechanic at the time during the absence of Mr. Kehrman, and of firing for him for seven years, during which time he found a true friendship which showed itself in many ways, and which has continued to today. J. F. Kehrman was next to speak, and this venerable veteran paid tribute to the integrity and ability of his comrades in a brief talk.
Mr. Shantl then took the floor, acting for Superintendent C. F. Dougherty of Poplar Bluff, who had intended to be present in person, who had been unexpectedly called home from Ste. Genevieve because of the serious illness of two of his children. Mr. Schantl, in a short talk, expressed pleasure at the opportunity he had to serve in a capacity which permitted him to do honor to the three veterans, and paid them high tribute for the splendid records which they had placed in the annals of the railroad during their service with it. He explained the reason for Mr. Dougherty's absence, and read the following letter to Engineer Bowman from that official: "Poplar Bluff, Mo., We are confident that you have a number of years of usefulness still ahead of you and want you to feel that you are still a member of the railroad family, and if at any time we can be of service to you, either officially or personally, desire that you feel free to call upon us. With best personal regards and good wishes, I am Sincerely, Following delivery of the foregoing letter to Engineer Bowman, Mr. Shantl surrendered the floor and Mr. Spain called upon Bart Wilkson, veteran conductor, who spoke in simple praise of the veterans who were being honored and wished them well. Mr. Spain, acting for fellow employees of the Missouri-Illinois, then presented Mr. Belknap with an overcoat, and Mr. Bowman with a beautiful hand carved B. of I. E. ring. Mr. Kehrman had been presented with a wrist watch on the occasion of his retirement three years ago. The last feature of the program was the presentation of beautiful bouquets to Mr[s]. Kehrman, and to Mesdames Bowman and Belknap, the presentation being made by little Beatrice Frazier, on behalf of the ladies of the local railroad group. All three of the veterans responded briefly, thanking their friends and fellow employees for the honor shown them. And thus is recorded the final chapter in the service record of "Daddy," or "Pop" Bowman. The record of this short meeting is easily given but who, we ask you, might assume to put into words the history of fifty years of service on the rails? Half a century in a locomotive cab is a long time, but the record is there, for in addition to the forty-two years and eight months with the M. R. & B. T. - Missouri-Illinois, there is eight years with the C. B. & Q. For some seven years he wielded the shovel intelligently and efficiently, and finally passed his examination and was promoted to the right side of the cab as an engineer. The toil and sweat of those years cannot be described. Railroading was hard in those early days, and engines were tiny, almost puny, as compared to our modern giants of the rail. But freight and passengers were plentiful, for concrete highways and automobiles were unknown, and everything which moved, either freight or passenger, moved by train. As a consequence the loads were heavy, and so were many of the grades, and it required real backbone, brawn, and intelligent application of both, to keep a toiling engine "hot and hopping" as she labored along with more tonnage than her rating called for. Young John Bowman had backbone, plenty of brawn, and his intelligence was above the average. He mastered his trade thoroughly, and then mastered the mechanics of the iron horse, he was kept busy feeding countless tons of coal. His beginning as an engineer was auspicious, and he might be retiring now from the service of the great Burlington System instead of the Missouri-Illinois but for the big "Q" strike which came in the latter part of the eighties. Faithful to his fellow workers, he went out with them. When the strike was settled in February, 1888, he elected to try his luck in other localities rather than resume his duties on the old run. The lure of Texas was in the air, and with a friend and companion, he made his way to the Lone Star State. At Temple, he applied for work at the terminal of the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe, and found that while there was no employment available at that moment in the mechanical department, he could procure a job in the train service. He signed up as a brakeman, and begun his brief few months of service in that department the following day when he went out on a work train on what was then known as the "Alligator Division", this particular stretch of track being so named because of the plentiful crop of huge alligators which basked in the warm waters and on the muddy banks of the swamps which were the most prominent part of the terrain in that part of Texas at that time. For nearly a month he worked as a brakeman on this work train as it made its way up and down the branch while colored section hands loaded thousands upon thousands of ties upon an endless string of flat cars, and then he came back to the main line. But train service did not appeal to the young railroader, who had started his railroad career on the engine, and whose whole being throbbed with desire to again be back where he could feel the response of a locomotive to this touch. He quit the trainman's job on the Santa Fe and went back into engine service with the M. K. & T., but the lure of Texas had gone out of his blood and, after about a year had elapsed from the time he left his native heath in Illinois, he quit and returned to his home. A short time at home developed a new restlessness, and here the young railroader was facing a real crisis in his life. To the uninitiated it may not be understood, but to the old time railroader it is simple truth that at a certain point in the young railroad man's career, be it in train service or engine service, there comes the lure of travel to distant places. In those days the satisfaction of this desire was a simple matter, as jobs were plentiful on almost every important railroad, and it was easy to drift from place to place and keep busy. Thus was developed the old time "boomer" type of railroader, so plentiful a few short years ago, but now practically crowded out of the picture by the more steady stay-at-home type and the laws of service seniority. Meeting a friend with whom he had formerly worked in St. Louis, young John Bowman and his companion decided that they would make their way to Mexico City, Mexico, and there try their hands at railroading in foreign fields. If they did not like it, they could easily make their way back to the states. As a first step in their program of working their way south, a railroading friend in St. Louis told them he thought they might secure employment at Bonne Terre, as he had heard the M. R. & B. T. was hiring some men. To Bonne Terre they came and, on the following day, Thomas Mead, Master Mechanic, told young Bowman that he could give him a job firing in the Herculaneum yards if he cared to have it. He wanted work to make a stake to help him on his way to Mexico City, and any sort of a job was acceptable. The M. R. & B. T. was narrow gauge at the time, and he went to Herculaneum to take up his duties of spading "black diamonds" into the little yard engine. The engineer, who also happened to be an old acquaintance off the "Q", was stricken with illness in a few days and laid off to go to his home in Illinois. John Bowman was moved over to the right side of the engine, and thus started his career as an engineer with the M. R. & B. T., a career which was from that date onward continuous and unbroken. Shortly after his employment he was sent out from Bonne Terre on the work train which was carrying a crew which tore up the old narrow gauge line to Summit, a line which was abandoned when the road to Riverside was completed and opened. Within a short time he was pulling trains on the main line between Doe Run, Bonne Terre and Riverside, and early in the nineties he was assigned to a passenger run. The accompanying picture, showing narrow gauge engine 6 and her tiny coaches, was made during the early days of his passenger engineering experience.
But, you say, you thought
he was only working for a stake to go to Mexico City. So he thought, but fate and
Dan Cupid decreed otherwise. He had only been in Bonne Terre a short time when he
met pretty and vivacious [Sarah Adeline] Addie Wilkson, and from that time on Mexico City
had as well been moved to China. He promptly decided that Bonne Terre was good
enough for him, and 'ere many moons had slipped away their romance brought them to the
altar and to the opening days of a beautiful home life which has grown richer and riper
with the passing years, and which has given Bonne Terre one of its happiest and most
substantial homes. In those days there was not a single house where Flat River, Rivermines, Desloge and Elvins are now built up, and the narrow gauge trains ran from Doe Run Junction to Bonne Terre without stopping. Business was plentiful and the little narrow gauge road was kept busy. You might look at the picture of the little 6 spot and think it was just a toy, but "Pop" Bowman will tell you today that in spite of the fact that her drive wheels were only 44 inches in diameter he made the run from Bonne Terre to Riverside in fifty minutes on many occasions, and that was respectable speed, and is a respectable speed yet today, when you consider the many tortuous curves with which the main line of the M. R. & B. T. is supplied. But the days of the narrow gauge were numbered even from the beginning, and 'ere many years had passed the standard gauge line had been extended from Herculaneum to Bonne Terre. Then "Pop" Bowman enjoyed a unique period of his railroad experience. He handled the throttle and valves on standard gauge engine 7 between Bonne Terre and Riverside and back, then got off the broad gauge locomotive and onto narrow gauge 6 and took the smaller train to Doe Run and back to Bonne Terre. This dual service continued until the line was made standard from end to end, when the little narrow gauge engine, No. 6, was sold to a large company operating a sugar plantation in Cuba. They tried to purchase the services of the engineer along with the machine, but by this time "Pop" Bowman was "Pop" in reality, and had several reasons for wanting to remain in Bonne Terre and make a home for his happy family. The increasing traffic on the line soon called for additions to the motive power family, and locomotive 18 was among the acquisitions. The 18 was quite some engine in her day, and was larger and more powerful than her predecessors, but many of our local residents still remember her well and her dimensions, when compared to modern locomotives, were small, to say the least. In 1917 came the modern passenger locomotives 30 and 31, which marked the first step from the simple standard type passenger locomotive to the more bulky and efficient compound superheater type. For seven years "Pop" Bowman piloted the 31 on her daily trips to and from St. Louis before he gave up the passenger service and went back to freight work in order that he might have some time at home. For more than 33 years he was in passenger engine service and for fourteen of that time he was on the through run to St. Louis and return from Doe Run, during which time the only opportunity he had to spend a night in his home at Bonne Terre was to lay off from his work. During that entire fourteen years he ate all of his meals from his dinner buckets, his faithful companion fixing his dinner in the morning and delivering it to him on his engine as he passed through Bonne Terre northbound about 9:00 a.m., and supplying him with his supper and breakfast in another bucket when he passed through on his southbound trip at 6:00 p.m. Several years ago, when changes in the passenger schedule were made which would have made it necessary for him to move to St. Louis, to retain his run, he elected to change to freight service, and since that time has been able to enjoy his home, as his headquarters have been in Bonne Terre, and he has been able to spend his nights there. Hale, hearty and happy engineer Bowman is seventy years old, even though he is much younger physically than many men twenty years his junior and in spite of the fact that he can read the paper today without glasses. There is many a mile of good,sound, efficient engine driving in his sturdy body yet, but the rules must be lived up to, and he must retire. Is he worried about it? Not by a jugful. He doesn't think much of the idea of not having anything in particular to do, but "Mother" Bowman says she can arrange that part of it, and anyhow, she says, he was away from home so many years that he will have to do a lot of staying around the house to make it up. We would like to go more completely into detail of the many experiences which were naturally crowded into his busy and eventful life, but truly to record them would require a book. There were thousands of incidents worth telling, from the old days of hand brakes and open range, with no right-of-way fences, when cattle roamed the tracks, at will, and when, as "Mother" Bowman laughingly tells, Jack killed a cow a day for thirty days between Bonne Terre and Doe Run and got an enforced layoff which enabled him to take her to their first party, on down to the day not many years ago when he found himself and train 826 on the main line between Riverside and St. Louis with the Sunshine Special too close for comfort and going in the same direction. Then it was that engine 31 showed the stuff she was made of and reeled off mile after mile at better than seventy miles per hour with the result that the crack Sunshine was kept safely in the clear and there were no delays for anyone to explain. And many notables were hauled in the coaches behind him, including Harry Payne Whitney, versatile sportsman and man of wealth, who, on his first trip into this territory, was hauled from Riverside to Federal by "Pop" Bowman. Nor far from Herculaneum the porter climbed over the tender and handed the engineer two ten dollar bills, announcing that one was for him and one for the fireman, with Mr. Whitney's compliments. They protested that it was against the rules to accept tips, but the porter said to forget it and they did. That, says "Pop", was the first buffalo ten dollar bill he ever saw. Other prominent travelers who rode behind him, many of them in the old private car "Siesta", which was first narrow gauge and then converted to standard, and in the more pretentious "Linares" which came later, included Leslie M. Shaw, Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, several members of the Guggenheims, the Parsons family and the present day president of the St. Joseph Lead Company and former president of the M. R. & B. T., Clinton H. Crane. There were many others but to mention them all would be impossible. We would like to tell you more. There is much more to be told, but "Daddy" Bowman is no hand to talk overly much and the rich fountain of experiences which lies in his active memory flows slowly. Not that he is averse to talking, for nothing is further from his generous nature and his heart is as big as his body, but it just naturally takes time to tell even a small part of the experiences which come with fifty years in a locomotive, a half century of service which covered approximately two million miles of rail travel and a multitude of happenings from the day of the brake stick and the coupling pin down to modern air brakes and automatic controls. You will see engine 102 at her daily task of hustling freight cars up and down the line almost any day. Just a great, big ponderous freight locomotive whose every line exemplifies strength and power, but she will be driven by other hands than those of "Pop" Bowman from now on, and every time the writer looked at her giant bulk he will recall the happenings of the afternoon of December 18, 1932, when this great machine seemed to be alive and breathing as it helped write the final chapter in the railroad career of a man he has known and loved for many years. You will hear the siren song of 31's whistle on frequent occasions, loosened by other hands, but to him who records this story, each time that sound comes to his ears it will carry to him a message from a tried and true friend. We congratulate you, "Pop" Bowman, from the depths of our hearts. Our fathers and mothers, our sisters and brothers, our wives and sweethearts, our children, have all ridden many miles in safety behind your steady and competent engine driving, and the countless trips you have made to and from our busy communities have each one added to the constructive influences which have built those communities into what they are today. You have done a fine work and have done it in a big, fine way, and it is a pleasure to every one of us to see you reap this opportunity to enjoy a long period of leisure and happiness with that splendid wife and family who have shared your many years of constant duty. |
NOTE: John W. Bowman died February 21, 1937, and is buried in Bonne Terre Cemetery. |
