Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 56, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1913 — The Go Ahead Sisonal [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Go Ahead Sisonal

The boys in the roundhouse thought it funny that Dannie McCaull should

quit his job as passenger engi-,-neer on the Brookhaven division, by which .he pulled down from $l5O to SIBO a month, and go to raising garden truck just outside of town. When they spoke

to him about it Dannie would get out a notebook and pencil and figure on how much more he would be worth in the next ten years by raising pumpkins and ducks and chickens than he would at engineering. But this didn’t fool anybody, because the boys knew that Dannie had been born a railroader and that his only real elepieht was along the shining rails. The thing that made Dannie quit the road occurred wh,en the baby Dan was a little better than two years old. It was a gloomy drizzly day. No. 55 was approaching the town. Owing to the slippery condition of the rails the engineer had had some trouble in getting his unusually heavy train over the road on the schedule. The train was a few minutes l&te, having lost the time coming up the long grade from North River, and Dannie was crowding on the drivers every ounce of steam they would stand without slipping, 'there were several curves, one of considerable length* around a sloping hill just before reaching the place where Dannie lived. As the engine swept around the hill, revealing the long tangent ahead Dannie saw on the rails a small white object which he instantly recognized as a little chap. Instinctively he reached for the whistle lever and then his heart failed him at the thought that it wouldn’t do the slightest good; Little Dannie was no more afarid of a railroad train than he was of Bill Skaggs. He knew that his dad was on that engine, and he felt satisfied in his little baby brain that no harm could come to him when his dad was near. So he toddled up toward the engine with a smile on. his lips and his little arms stretched out. Of course the half-crazed father shut off the steam and applied the emergency quicker than I am telling it, and then, overcome by the horror of the situation, his head dropped on the window as if he had fainted. Bill Skaggs, big ugly old Bill, as soon as he saw the kid, ran along the running board beside the big boiler as lively as any monkey could have done, climbed out on the pilot, stood still for a moment until he caught the baby’s eye, and then gave the regulation railroad signal for the train to move forward. Little Dannie saw it and obeyed orders. He cleared the track. Skaggs was a little wobbly and his leathery face looked odd as he climbed back into the cab. He saw what had happened to Dannie —that his nerve had entirely left him —and so he motioned him to get on the ether side of the engine and took the train into the division himself.

Before going home Dan went up into the superintendent’s office and resigned. He simply told the superintendent that it was a good year for farming and he wanted to get back to the land. Skaggs took his place as engineer and made good. Little Dannie still retains his interest in railroading and will doubtless in time be an engineer himself. He sometimes thinks it funny, however, that his dad quit such a kingly profession in order to hoe in the garden.