A week ago I wrote a second installment to a diary entitled "My fate, Destiny and Trains", Here. In that diary I wrote of how I arrived for my first day of work for the Southern Pacific Railroad at Seguin,Texas. My arrival at Seguin around 1969 and the summary of events that transpired there is but only a glimpse of my personal story that derived when I started a series describing my life as a six-years old child caught in the middle of the most horrendous tragedy ever to ravage this country as the Great Depression did. I begin the narration of my childhood life as a six-year old Here in a diary titled "The Story Teller`s Dream is Awakened", and wrote of the horrors, hunger and of the despair that led my mother to walk out of my life, leaving me behind in order for other siblings to survive starvation according to how I understood then.
I have related all the above in diaries Here, Here, Here and the list of diaries with this same title reached eleven. In the eleventh installment after having written extensively about my fate and destiny, the tip of my destiny placed me face to face with a train. A train that would change my life forever.
Then came two diaries entitled "My fate, destiny and trains". The second of these is the one in my opening statement above. It was my intention to write a third installment to these two diaries. Unfortunately, a pesky bug attacked me withoug warning or good cause and laid me out for several days. I am now running on all cylinders and have changed course.
The title of the current diary "The Pinnacle of my Destiny and Trains" is best suited here because I am now on course to fulfill my Destiny`s role. My fate led me there. Despite the odds facing a child over 70 years ago and living to write about it, my job has me arriving at the Pinnacle of my childhood`s dream as I am reaching Brackettville, Texas where at last my life`destiny awaits.
It must have been around 2 p.m that Wednesday when I pulled into a gas station in Uvalde, Texas. I wanted to check the anti-freeze in my car and stretch my legs a bit. I still had a few miles to go until I reached my destination -- Brackettville, Texas. My transition to this new job with the railroad had gone smoothly at least until now. According to the orders I received from Headquarters, today Wednesday and tomorrow Thursday are my days-off, which meant of course, that I had no need to hurry getting there.
At a fair distance I saw the light dangling slowly in the misty heat. I knew the lone traffic light was the marker sign that this was Bracketville, Texas. I already knew a bit of history of this place. I knew among other things that this hanging signal light was the only existing light at the entrance of town. A medium sized building complex that featured a Diner Cafe was the attraction, sitting just to the right side of the road and under the hanging traffic light. Getting to that light meant I was in Brackettville. It exhibited more western lore than Seguin. It is here that The Duke, John Wayne directed The Alamo, the movie in 1960.
I exited the car and walked towards the Cafe. My first priority here is to rent a room upstairs of this Diner which had "Rooms for Rent" plastered high on the outside wall so vehicle drivers passing through could easily see. I would rent here and commute to Spofford nightly. I asked Freddy, the owner to direct me to Spofford.
The room was decent, with a dinette and shower so we walked down the stairs and stood outside the Diner. He pointed across the road, just a bit to the side of where we stood. He said that a small sign at the entrance of the road leading to Spofford was approximately a foot in size so it was hard to notice. The sign was a picture of a hand pointing towards Spofford indicating nine miles. I thanked Freddy and opened the trunk of my car. I took my personal belongings upstairs and arranged my room and then came back down and got into my car.
The depot itself sat on a wide swath of carefully laid floor of gravel, clean and spacey for parking, allowing the necessary machinery, such as vehicles and railroad components useful for the operation of the railroad to perform and move around. It had its own diesel pump to gas its vehicles. It also had a wide yard where box cars were standing idle waiting to be moved.The depot gave me the first impression of being fairly new. It looked to me like previously it had been a railroad box car, converted by special engineering into a modern office type medium size building. It was clean here. I did not see the western dusty scene I left behind at Seguin.
My duties here at Spofford included a third shift. According to Don the second shift operator, I would come to work at 11:00 P.M. to find a train parked behind the depot. This particular train had come from the Del Rio area, some thirty miles west and on the Mexican Border during the midnight hours and used the bunkhouse to sleep.The train crew would be sleeping during my shift. At 5:00 A.M. the dispatcher would order me to go to the bunkhouse and awaken the crew. I would have an order for the conductor instructing him how to arrange and connect the train that was to pull out of Spofford 6:30 A.M. My duty was to type the list of box cars in the order in which they were to be hooked up on the train. My duties were pretty much straightforward and simple. Most importantly was the lead engine pulling the train. I had to tell the conductor the engine number that was to be used on this train. All I needed to do was to keep focused and concentrate which was easy in my new environment.
The first full week on my job was learning of course. I had to learn how to operate the teletype machine. This machine has nothing to do with Morse code. This gadget operated with a key board for typing, so any messages were typed, not tic, tic, tic as in Morse code. Then in my second week on the job, what I have always maintained was my destiny, had been spying on me from the darkness outside of my window. It was around 3:00 A.M. when my destiny was set in motion.
Sitting at my desk in front of the large window, everything outside was pitch black, but I saw some movement and became alarmed. I pretended not to have seen it and continued my work. Anyone who knows how these depots operate, know that no one is allowed near other than the telegrapher operator, unless it is someone who has official business with the railroad and needs to consult the operator. I had spent all of my working nights alone and isolated in this wilderness when I heard the soft knock on my door. I cautiously walked to the door but the reflection of the inside of the depot on the window pane did no allow me to see outside, even if there was a light bulb on the side of the building. I opened the door slightly and saw the woman and the child. I opened the door wide. I saw myself as the small child, raggedy and obviously hungry, my head reeled and my mind flashed back in time and I froze.
The woman was young in her twenties, but looked very old and battered with her hair carrying pieces of grass as if having spent time on the ground apparently resting or sleeping. The child was a portrait of me in my mind. I asked the woman what she wanted and she begged me for some water. She told me that they had been running for eight days even though it was only 30 miles from the border. The child was sick and she had to stop periodically to tend his illness. I told the woman to come inside where I fed them and saw the child was very weak, malnourished and skinny. The woman said she was going to find her husband somewhere around Houston, Texas and asked me for help.
I felt an inner outrage at what I was witnessing. My mind flashed back to that fateful day seventy-years ago when I was running as fast as I could down in that trench of the Alazan Creek. I assured the woman that I would put her and the child on a train that would take her as close to her husband as possible. The child was sweating and had no shoes. I felt helpless and incompetent to handle the situation so I told the woman to wait in the darkness until 5:00 A.M.. At that time I told her I would help her get on a box car of the train that would take her East as far as Houston, Texas and beyond if needed. I told her that as soon as she saw my flashlight on the tracks she should leave her place of hiding and come to meet me. I would show her an additional hiding place until it was time for her to climb into the box car with the child.
When we reached Comal Street I told the officer to turn left as we reached the street. My desperation was leading me to avoid being taken back to the same place where I had spent so much time trying to escape from. I saw a large empty yard with tall weeds and the Alazan Creek in the background. I told the officer that the house across the empty yard was where I lived. He exited his car and took my arm. As he led me gently towards the house I had pointed out to him, I pulled myself free and ran across the street and jumped the fence into the tall weeds. I kept on running wildly and stumbled down towards the Alazan Creek. I kept running until I came upon a spot of the creek that I could jump across. I found the spot and jumped over and kept running.
It is around 4:00 A.M. and my mind is locked on that small child running down a trench of the Alazan Creek so many years ago. There are no dang fences at the Mexican Border nor is there any scorpion-for-breakfast racists, nor are there any Illegal Immigrants as I recall in 1969. Mexicans walked 30 miles across the Rio Grande in masses and kept on coming. People around my area at that time took this issue of Mexicans coming looking for work, to feed their families and even some were running like I did so many years ago. I was a telegrapher operator. I was not a border patrol. This was my depot. This was my train and I would use it to help those in need that were running from oppression, hunger or whatever it was that they ran from..This was my destiny. It was set for me many years ago and I knew it. They would continue to run and use my underground trains to freedom for many years to come.
I felt deep in my heart that I had reached the pinnacle of my destiny with my trains.
Fate had written all the chapters in my life just as I have recalled them here at Dkos through my diaries. These desperate people running for survival only took me back to a continuation of a cycle, where people continue to run from a life of misery or abuse, hunger and despair. Just like I did.