The Race
By
Vixyy Fox
“Great Uncle Digger Dover always took a pull from his jug and rocked a bit waiting for his
vocal chords to loosen up. He was a great story teller and folks came from all around just to
listen to him spin a story the same as my Grandma spun wool. I suppose you could say they
had ‘yarn’ in common.”
Waldo eyeballed the children gathered at his feet waiting for any of them to get the pun.
“Well that went off like a wet firecracker,” he muttered when there was no response, “I must
be talk’n to the sharper side of the family tree. You children wouldn’t be Mary Lew’s bunch
would ya?”
There was a chorus of ‘noes and giggles’. For the most part they hadn’t a clue who Mary Lew
was… long since passed and missed but vaguely by a few of their elders.
“Ok then,” he told them with a nod, “You all listen up and I’ll tell you about the greatest race
there ever was, and I’m telling you exactly how Great Uncle Digger told me. Rest assured it’s
the gospel truth, because he only ever told the unvarnished truth. Not like that Tommy
Oonkins who couldn’t tell the truth if it was a bald faced lie to begin with.”
The old Dog screwed up his face and wrinkled his nose a bit as his memory worked. “Why I
remember that Tommy telling me once that he dun ate a sour apple so sour he stayed
puckered up for a week. Course I knew it wasn’t true cuz I tried one the day before him and
only stayed puckered for an hour or so. They was good pie apples to be sure but they weren’t
no pucker pursers.”
“The race, Grandpa Waldo,” the youngest pup among them yipped, “Was it a foot race?”
The old fellow hooted and slapped his knee. “Heavens no young’n, it warn’t no footrace,
though on my best days as a young fellow like you I was able to keep up with the trains for a
good mile or so.”
“Trains?” asked another of the youngsters.
“Durn toot’n,” the Dog told him with a chuckle. Pulling an invisible cord hanging just above
his head he did a fair imitation of an old steam whistle. “It was billed as the greatest race this
side of the Taloosa Mountains; born straight out of a whiskey bottle and minds that simply
had not enough to keep them occupied.”
He paused and looked at them in a serious manner, letting him know he respected them as
equals, thus gaining their confidence.
“Three toots on the whistle when you got her going and a wave to the other crews to be
friendly. That was the start of the race don’t you know; and not an easy thing to do since they
had to steal the engines in the dead of night. Being as they were cold, part of the race was
seeing how fast the crews could get a fire up and steam in their bellies.”
“Papa just turns the key in his truck to start it up,” young John Bellybup said in a rather high
falooting way. He was not one to be swayed by some stinky old story telling gray muzzle.
Waldo just laughed at him. To the delight of the other pups, John Bellybup was quickly put in
his place. “Shows what you know there boyo, and it ain’t much. There weren’t any of that
new fangled electricity or N-jines when this race was hatched out. Steam! That was the
muscle of those iron monsters. Steam made them roll and rattle on those old iron tracks.
Steam made the whistle sing for her dinner. Steam… Oh Lordy…”
He breathed in a rather funny way for a moment, and sat back a bit in the rocker. After a
moment, he caught his breath again and continued.
“Live steam was the most advanced thing this side of those mountains,” he said in a bit more
reserved manner. He then squinted his eyes at John Bellybup. His rocking motion stopped as
he scrutinized the youngster. “I’m bett’n you’re a kin to Roary Coofoe of the North Ridge
Coofoes, ain’t ya? He always was a one to challenge Great Uncle Digger Dover when he was
on about one truth or another.”
“That would be my Granddad,” the pup muttered.
“Thought so,” Waldo said with a nod. “Pegged it sure enough; the apple don’t fall far from
the tree does it? That durned Roary could talk and talk and talk and never did he make a lick
of sense. He was related to the Durnbacks, but you’d know that being that he’s your granddad.
Old Marty Durnback was on Engine Number Three the night of the race. If it hadn’t been for
the McCoy oiler he would’a burned the bearings up on that one for sure. It was just a good
thing it was full to the brim when they started out.”
“Oiler?” one of the children asked.
“Keeps the drive arms lube-ree-kated, young’n. Once those fellas stole in and got the boilers
lit off, they had to wait for the steam pressure to rise up in the gage. I distinctly remember
Digger tell’n it like this; ‘You fed the fire until that needle was durn near in the red and then
you squeezed the locking grip on the throttle just so and inched it forward. Then you’d hear a
pshhhhhhh sort of sound followed by a chunk and a lunk as the drive wheels took hold and
moved those twenty tons of metal forward like it weighed the same as a feather.”
Wlado leaned forward in his rocker and made the pshhhhhh chunk a lunk sound. He then got
all of the children to do the same, while moving his one arm like a drive rod. Slowly he
increased the frequency and speed as he pushed his imaginary throttle full on. When they
were all going real strong like, he reached up and pulled that imaginary whistle cord and let
out with the most beautiful bellow any one of them had ever heard.
“And there they were, all snuck into the train yard and each of their teams heisted up into the
cockpit of an engine. There was three fellas to a team. Old Durnback was on Number Three,
Marty Felderwelder was on the Number two, and Great Uncle Digger Dover was plunked
right side to the fire box on Number One. He and his crew were first-rate and that made them
the first ones out of the yard. He was doing a good five miles per hour when he tooted his
three whistles and they all waved. That’s when the fun began. He knew his engines, though
he’d only worked on them for one summer loading coal. Hed brought his oiler and lubed
those drive arms real good while his partners in crime, Fenny Fenwicki and Knucklehead
Nunsuch, stoked the fire with the finesse of a brain doctors ready to slice into your melon.”
The old Dog paused to take a pull of medicinal whiskey from the jug sitting next to his
rocking chair. He then took the children on the wildest ride of their young lives, imitating all
the noises, hoots and hollers of the train crews as they yelled back and forth while taking turns
shoveling coal, minding the throttles, and watching the tracks. They never had so much as a
thought for those on the ground working the switches because they trusted them, and pretty
much the entire valley was in on it.
“The race down that mountain wasn’t nearly as difficult as the last ten miles,” he told the
children. “That was where the three tracks began weaving in and out, after which they necked
down to two lines, and then finally to one as the Rhone Valley Railroad terminated in the
small town of?”
“Rhone Valley,” the children yelled out together.
“That’s right!” he told them, his rocking chair pumping furiously just as if he was sitting in
the engineer’s seat on old Number One. “And what’s at the end of line?” he asked them.
“Nothing!” John Bellybup hollered, seeing an opportunity at revenge for being called out
earlier. “It all got torn down last year so they could build a parking lot. There hasn’t been a
train in the valley for thirty years Waldo.”
There was an ensuing silence as the old Dog stopped rocking and just stared at the youngster.
“Is that a fact?” he finally rumbled.
“It sure is a fact!” John Bellybup told his elder in a near shout as he felt the belly warmth of
sweet and vengeful victory.
With a ‘Pshhhhhh…’ the old Dog slowly rose from his rocker. There was a hush among the
children as they weren’t quite certain what was happening.
With a soft ‘chunk’, the old fellow reached out and took hold of his cane. His eyes never left
those of John Bellybup, whose own eyes squinted in delight that he had caused the old Dog’s
story to fall apart. Television was so much better in any case, and those stories were all true…
his granddad told him so.
With a ‘lunk’, Waldo reached out with his free paw in a speed that defied his age and
snatched the smug little bully by the collar of his shirt. Pushing his face right up to the pups,
he screeched out in his train whistle screech and then whacked him on the backside with his
cane.
“Chunk-a-lunk,” whack… “Chunk-a-lunk,” whack… “Chunk-a-lunk,” whack…
“Pull the cord John!” the old Dog yelled in his ear, “Make the whistle sound out and save
your backside a whupping! Pull the whistle there boy!”
“Chunk-a-lunk,” whack… “Chunk-a-lunk,” whack… “Chunk-a-lunk,” whack…
“WHEEEEOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEE!” the would be bully cried out for all he was worth. The
cane stopped striking him; though to his dismay the other children had joined in on the train
noises.
“Chunk-a-lunk Chunk-a-lunk Chunk-a-lunk Chunk-a-lunk Chunk-a-lunk Chunk-a-lunk…
WHEEEEOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEE! WHEEEEOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEE!
WHEEEEOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
Waldo raised his cane in the air like a band conductor and all the noise stopped on the same
stroke of whistle noise.
“Now tell me what’s at the end of the tracks in Rhone Valley young John Bellybup; relative to
the no so infamous ‘Hot Air Roary Coofoe’.
“The depot!” the pup told the old Dog through his tears.
“Durn toot’n,” Waldo told him as he released his collar. “And I’m willing to bet you have no
idea what happened there when Great Uncle Digger Dover rolled in with is crew on Old
Number One.”
“No, sir,” the pup said with a sudden new found respect for the old fellow.
Waldo chuckled, and then tottered back to his rocker. Looking at all the children, he quietly
told them, “The brakes failed, and they had to jump for it.”
Plopping back down in his rocker with a thump, he pointed to a picture that sat upon the
fireplace mantle. “Take that down so everyone can see it,” he told John. When this was done,
and the children had all had a chance to look, he told them, “Billed as the greatest race this
side of the Taloosa Mountains, it was born straight out of a whiskey bottle and minds that
simply had not enough to keep them occupied. Great Uncle Digger and his buddies did three
years at hard labor on the railroad for that little bit of silliness; but ya know… when he was
getting on in his years as I am myself, he confided in me a secret. He said, ‘Waldo, if I had the
chance to do it all over again you can bet your sweet molasses I sure as shoot would; even
though I might just be shoveling coal as the Devil’s fireman because of it.’ I suppose he was
the reason I stood on the right side of the footplate for all of those years as an engineer. There
is shear happiness and joy in that which, unfortunately, you young’ns will never know.”
The wind seemed to let out of the old fellow then, much as the steam is let out of an engine at
the end of its run.
John Bellybup quietly took the picture from the other children and coming over to Waldo,
handed it back to him.
“I’m sorry,” he told the old Dog.
“You’re forgiven,” his elder responded with a small smile.
“Would you tell me more about trains, sir?”
Waldo winked at him.
“Come back tomorrow, and I’d be happy to.