The war ended and the troops came home. By the way, we won that one. (The last one we tried to win). Daddy came home and we moved back to Millegeville and he operated a service station there. Millegeville was and is a nice town and it had some very neat things. It was the old state capitol before the war for southern independence (so called Civil War) before the capitol was moved to Atlanta and it had the train tracks go right down the main street of town. The train would chug through town very slowly and stop all the traffic. If the red light was red the train would even stop if it had time. That was a very impressive sight to me of that big black engine with black smoke pouring out of the top and the white steam popping off and blowing that whistle. I hated to see the steam trains go. Well, I also hated to see all of our passenger trains go... We visited the town last year and the train tracks have been taken out of town.
The train tracks went down the street in the front of our school playground and the engineers would blow the whistle and wave at us as it passed. We could see the passengers in the windows and on the platforms at the end of cars and they would wave as they slowly passed. Us poor little kids were all tired out having to wave at all those folks.
We lived on Jefferson Street just south of the Georgia Military College (GMC) and our school was in front of GMC and not far from the point where the train tracks joined the main street. It was a short walk from our house to the tracks and the tracks led through the woods and to a high railroad trestle over a large creek. (A recent trip back to Millegeville showed that the trestle was not so high and the creek was not nearly as large as it appeared to me as a small boy.)
That period of time was great for us kids as we had freedom to go and play as long as we were back for meals and by dark. We liked to go and walk the trestle over the creek because it showed our bravery (or stupidity). You know how the railroad tracks are laid over the cross ties and over gravel? Well, the trestle was the same except that there was no gravel. Instead, it had wide open spaces between the cross ties and no handrails. We never had any trouble crossing the trestle until one day we heard a whistle blow, looked up, and there was a train coming right at us. We ran back across the trestle, managed not to fall between the cross ties, and then jumped off into the creek as the train went by. No, we never told anybody about it and, as far as I know, it was never reported to the police. (A mark of manhood is that the boy has taken a whiz off of a train trestle at least once.) Believe it or not, we got away with the wet pants that had dried enough by the time we had to be home. Don't tell my Mom!
We were free to ride our bikes all over and down south of town we found an abandoned brick yard. It was a wonderful place for a young boy. There were huge brick ovens with iron doors that, to us, was a castle. It had a frame of rollers going down to an abandoned railroad spur. We went all over town and drained the last drop of motor oil out of every used oil can at the gas stations to free them up so they would roll. It was as close to "Six Flags" as we could get!
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain
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