The crossing barriers were down and the red lights were flashing this afternoon as we approached the train track on our way to Woodchop Shop. One car on the opposite side of the track was stopped; in front of us a long-haul trucker with a huge excavator on its trailer waited. And we waited. And we waited. A pickup truck dodged the crossing barriers and continued on his way.
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When I was born, my parents were living in an apartment that was the upstairs of my grandparents home. There had once been a stairway connecting the two floors, but that was blocked off and an outside stairway built up to a new second story door so that the households were separated.
Exactly one month after my birth, my grandfather had a massive heart attack and died. Gramma had always been a very independent sort, having taken over the role of woman of the house when her own mother died of tuberculosis. She moved her bed out onto the porch to get the benefit of as much fresh air as possible, and by doing so, she was able to arrest her own active TB. She raised her younger siblings. She carried on.
As I was about to start kindergarten, my parents found a wonderful house on a 2 acre lot in a small village suburb of Rochester, NY, and we – Gramma included – moved. The master bedroom became Gramma’s studio apartment; the rest of us used the smaller bedrooms.
Gramma had her own car and became the most sought-after babysitter east of the city, and it was as such that she drove to a sitting job on New Year’s Eve in 1958. En route, she stopped for the flashing red lights at a railroad crossing. It was a blind crossing, so she waited, but no train appeared. A pickup truck coming in the opposite direction stopped at the signal and then proceeded across the tracks. Gramma figured the signal must be malfunctioning and she drove onto the tracks. The freight train hit her car broadside, crumpling it and dragging it well down the tracks. She suffered more than a dozen fractures, but incredibly she recovered.
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So there we were at the tracks. Woodchop Shop was just on the other side, so with no train in sight, Bob walked across to it while I stayed with the truck.
After awhile I got out and struck up a conversation with the trucker. He was on a haul to Syracuse and had to stay on a prescribed route, so there was no way he could turn around or go ahead and maneuver through those crossing barriers. Another pickup coming toward us crossed, and I told him the story of my gramma’s encounter with the train.
The trucker replied, “Back in 1939 my grandfather was killed by a train. He was on a trestle.”
Wizened Wizard 