Sometimes when you are headed to 301 (or coming from it), you will find your way blocked by a big old slow freight train. In the good old days if you waited long enough, you could see the red caboose bouncing along and you knew the end was in sight. Today, there are no cabooses at the end – or anyplace else that I can tell. You just have to search way down the tracks and hope that is the last car coming or is it just a mirage and the train is actually 40 cars longer?
All that time waiting does give you some time to contemplate serious matters. For example what happened to the firms that made red cabooses? What happened to all the guys who worked in them (not to mention the guys who made the red paint and the ones who painted the caboose). Most important where does the jolly conductor go to rest now? I say this recognizing the fact that the conductors did not have much to be jolly about on a freight train, particularly when the locomotive was using coal (before coal was bad, of course). However, if they wanted to be promoted to a passenger train they had to learn to be jolly.
I still would like to know what happened to them. Perhaps, they now ride with the engineer and warn him if anyone is gaining on the train. I’ve seen enough Western movies to know that the bad guys are out there just waiting for the gold shipment to come through their area! When you take time to think about it, there are lots of jobs that were around when we were young, but no longer exist. To see that all you have to do is go into a department store where you can hardly find a clerk to give you advice or direct you to an area that you can’t find.
If you doubt what I am saying about the department store, just go in and try to find someone to tell you where the suspenders are. If he is young, he probably won’t know what suspenders are. If he does know, then he will probably tell you to go to the costume store next door. At least there are people still working someplace making suspenders, but you can forget about finding an ice pick. It is another important piece of our history that is gone. No one is around who even remembers how to make an ice pick. I had an uncle in Pennsylvania who was known far and wide as the premier ice pick maker in the whole country. He won the ice industry’s “Super Ice Pick Maker Award” ten years running.
He would have had a longer run, but he ran off with a lady who designed those fancy ice cube trays. You know, the ones where you lifted the lever and the cubes came out nice and square – or rectangular. Those trays are mostly in museums, although there is a rumor that there are still some made near Minot, North Dakota. However, the rumor also says that they no longer have the design quality of my uncle’s wife trays, and the maker is trying to get people to use them for jello cubes. That will probably not work, but it is another shocking example of jobs that are no longer around. I will not even mention woman’s rayon stockings even though they were a big morale builder (when filled out) during World War II.
The Blonde in the house thinks that I fret too much about what was around in the past. However, ask her sometime about a doll house that was made out of actual wood, and not pressed cardboard! I say that there is a new year coming up so “Let’s Make America Better Than Ever.” Old jobs are good jobs!
Wait, The Blonde tells me that somebody has already used something similar. Rats! I’ll think of something.
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com