Whoosh! and it was gone
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
I guess steam engines are pretty much gone already, but this past week, one of those glorious machines flew past Ramona — and I mean flew!
It all began when Paul stopped by the office a couple of weeks ago and said, "You know there's gonna be a steamer coming through Ramona in a couple of weeks. It'll be headin' from Herington to Pratt, and I just thought you girls might like to see it."
Of course we wanted to see it!
"Round about eight o'clock," Paul drawled, "hope that's not too early for ya," he grinned.
"Let's make it a party," said my sister Jessica, "I'll bring coffee!" Paul said he'd bring donuts and we had ourselves an event in Ramona.
On the morning of the event, it was raining! When Tooltime Tim and I pulled up at the crossing, Paul already was there. Our oldest citizen in town, Tony, was there, too. Jess was right behind with Mom. It was a little hard to get the party together with all of us huddled against the rain. Paul climbed into the pickup with Tony, hot coffee steaming up the windows. Jessica served coffee out of the trunk of Mom's car. Paul's donuts got a bit soggy as we passed them from window to window, but they still tasted good.
"Let's go on the other side of the tracks," TTT suggested. "You'll get a longer view for the camera." Furthermore, we'd have those famous co-op elevators — a Ramona landmark — in the background of any pictures we took. And we were equipped for photographs.
A couple of other cars pulled up, waiting. Nate was there and so was David. We scanned the sky for smoke. With the rain pelting in our eyes it was hard to see. Finally, the rain cleared a little and we all stepped out of our cars in anticipation of seeing a genuine steam engine come chugging down those tracks toward us — that's what I expected, chugging.
Some man I didn't know was watching with me and I didn't have time to introduce myself, I was so intent on photographing. "I remember when I was a kid and my grandparents took me to Herington to see the big old steam engines there — it was so exciting."
Meanwhile, snug in the car, Mom was remembering, too. "I can just see Mr. Klover standing there at the crossing like he used to do when I was a kid — watching for the train. That train finally killed him," Mom shook her head. "How could that be? It ran right over him. How could you not hear a train?"
"I hear the train," someone called and we all listened. Sure enough, way off in the distance we could hear her calling — a wonderful sound that "Whoooooo-a, whoooooo."
"There she is," we called and almost immediately, "There she goes!" It was whoosh and it was gone.
"I bet she's going 70 miles an hour," someone suggested.
Later, Paul said, "I was so busy trying to get a picture of it with the camera that I really didn't have a good look at her." Whoosh, she was gone.
We stood by the tracks, watching history fade into the distance right in front of our eyes — like the passage of time, whoooooosh.
It's another day in the country and Warren answered that question about Mr. Klover, "He was deaf!" Warren said, shaking his head. "We used to have a train like that come through Ramona twice a day — two passenger trains, #39 and #40 — and at that speed, they'd snag our mail off the line and leave a bag of mail behind." Those were the days — whoosh and they are gone.
