Late winter/early spring of 1950 the last passenger train to stop in Walace Alabama took me on my first train ride.
Destination, Flomaton.
In fourth grade with probably thirty five other little country kids on a field trip to experience this trip of a lifetime together, we planned and waited and discussed. Some disagreements broke out about what the trip should include, but were settled amongst ourselves. We were learning diplomacy while studying transportation.
Our unit on transportation covered trains, planes, ships and automobiles. I enjoyed the trains part best.
Thanks to my second most favorite teacher, Mrs. Rupert Green, she made this trip possible. Mrs Marble Currie, my first grade teacher was my all time favorite teacher. She opened my world to books and reading about things beyond Barnett Crossroads.
Mrs. Rupert Green showed me I was special without ever telling me so. I just knew from the way she smiled and tugged my hair she held me in high esteem.
I wrote a poem about trains and won first place in that contest.
Mrs. Green held up my poster with my poem to show the class while Miss.Margaret Hoomes, an important Escambia County Board of Education official was at our school for a visit. My poster was clean of smears and misspelled words, had a picture of a Burlington-Rock Island passenger train centered just so.
Lord, I felt gifted. Mrs. Green announced the day of departure for our train ride while Miss Hoomes stood smiling and encouraging us to study and work hard for the things we wanted. I wanted to ride that train.
Time moved like cold syrup. We talked, we planned who would sit with who. Seating choices changed daily, sometimes hourly. We planned what we would wear, how much spending money we would have for this all day round trip of approximately fifteen miles each way. It was exhausting.
Maxine announced her mama gave her permission to use Mum under her armpits that day. Fourth grade girls started smelling like deodorant the very next day.Mercy!
I talked about our field trip at home ad nauseam. My mama, the saint of patience, eventually told me to hush.
Finally, the day arrived. Mrs. Green had advised us to wear our Sunday best, polish our shoes, brush our teeth extra special, have our hair shiny clean and use our best manners. We would be representing the best Wallace had to offer.
I felt like I needed to pledge allegiance to something or wave the flag or whistle Dixie.
I planned to shine on that train trip.
Day of departure..........
As soon as roll call was over, everyone used the restroom, turned in our 25 cent cost of the ticket, we walked the quarter mile to the Wallace Train Depot.
A herd of goats in the road should give readers a mental picture here.
We skipped and galloped and kicked rocks, we picked early spring flowers from the ditches, we pushed and slapped and tried to outdo each other for Mrs.Green's attention.
She smiled and walked with such graceful dignity.
I could smell her Desert Flower perfume. Mrs. Green was high class.
I tried and failed not to clomp.
I thought perhaps I could go to finishing school one day. Aunt Bama told me what finishing school was for. She had referred to her daughter Betty, but I got the drift.................
Betty wasn't all that finished yet.
I had a feeling of always being unfinished when Aunt Bama showed up.
I can still hear Daddy say, " Earline's rough on shoes".
I still remember Aunt Bama's smirk as she looked down at my big feet.
Sigh!
We walked pass the Wallace Methodist Church to have several of the boys cut behind the church to look in the cemetery at the headstone of a prominent Wallace family member, Mr. Douglas Sowell, CSA soldier.. Mrs. Green told us about the Sowell Family and their connection to the first bank in Alabama, The Bank of Brewton and the famous Sowell brothers cattle drives of many years before.
I knew only Mr. Charlie Sowell, (a son or grandson of the first Charles) and his gristmill from grinding corn for my daddy so we could have cornbread and grits. I had never heard the word, prominent. I wanted to use that word when I found the chance. I thought at the time, it was for folks with dead CSA soldiers and bank presidents.
We made the walk into beautiful downtown Wallace in record time. Tickets were purchased, restroom break again, pushing and shoving to lineup we craned our necks to see if perhaps that train would appear on demand.
Mr Currie, the station master, announced the expected time of arrival.
We all heard the whistle. We all froze. I had to exhale.
"Hey, I hear the whistle".
"Prolly up at Repton".
"Nuh uh, it stops in Repton, already blowed there."
"If you hear it blow all the way here in Wallace, it as blowing at the crossing in Deer Range".
"Nuh, uh, if you hear it blowing here in Wallace, it's already crossing Dean Creek blowing for us".
Bryant Tew lived in Wallace and knew all that.
Bryant's mama was a teacher at Wallace and his daddy was our principal, so he had smarts by proxy.
That whistle was for us.
Line lengthening, shortening, undulating by shoving, wiggling and jumping up and down.
Nerves were jittery.
Train whistle blowing at the crossing of county road 40 in Wallace for the last stop for the last passengers to ride the last passenger train to stop in Wallace Alabama.
HISTORY WAS MADE THAT DAY.
Breeze trailing the train caused hair to rearrange, cinders to settle and speck.
Mrs. Green kept busy resetting hair-bows, tucking in shirttails, tying shoelaces, wiping snotty noses and shushing us.
The conductor steps down to set a little foot stool for us to step into another world of wonderful.
Shuttering moves through us en mass.
Climbing up, shoving to the seats, swapping, shoving back down the aisle for choosing and rechanging to return to our first choice.
Varnished woodwork darkened to amber with age, red velvet seats slicked at the edges and frayed from years of passenger use. Moss green carpet walked down to black backing covered the aisle.
Mama and Daddy had seen fit to give me 25 cents for spending. 25 cents would allow me two cocolars and three candy bars or one cocolar, two candy bars and a bag of popcorn or I could just wait to see what was offered. I checked several times to see if my quarter was still knotted in the corner of my handkerchief.
Known as The Selma to Pensacola Run, our trip originated in Selma very early that morning, would connect by way of Flomaton Junction to terminate in Pensacola very late that evening
Our ride was an historical run, but we were oblivious to that fact. We had been told but that information didn't compute until many years later.
"ALL.................... ABOARD"!
Release of smoke and steam.
Breath holding!
Necks craning to see Pete Thompson's Store with Linda's mama, Miz Neene Belle waving, looking back to see if Mr. Ollie was watching from Gilmore's General Merchandise. Joyce blushes as her mama and daddy wave from Grissetts Store on the other side of the tracks.
I feel light headed.
I see gnats behind my eyelids.
I have to breath really deep.
Now then!
Chuff, chuff, chuff, moving and increasing speed. Now we are cooking.
That little train swayed and rocked and jerked as it poured on the coal to get us to Flomaton Junction on time.
At Hammock it slowed and the whistle blew to warn at the crossing on Foshee Road.
The curve heading south caused metal on metal screeching and grinding.
We sat in the last car which had a water fountain.
We used it.
Little cone shaped paper cups filled with about two ounces of water was taken from the dispenser.
Aisle carpet was sogged with fountain water and squishy walked on.
We all needed water.
Mrs. Green looked put upon.
We looked out to see the pine trees, gallberry bushes and thickets of growth along the rail bed.
Some of the boys tried to lower the windows to try for grabbing the limbs that seemed in reach for us.
The brow furrowed old conductor wore a pair of black pants that were age slick shined and the leg crease showed fray. His yellowed shirt held his sleeves rolled to the elbow. His cap had tarnished gold braiding across the plastic bill. He looked tired and in need of living off his pension.
Just outside Osaka we saw a farmer plowing a field to ready for spring planting.
We crossed Blue Star Highway 31. I remembered Uncle Rudy Smith telling me If I started walking on Highway 31 at Flomaton, I could walk all the way to Chicago and wouldn't get lost.
I planned to walk to Chicago if I ever ran away from home.
I told anyone listening in my class that fact.
"Earline, you so crazy. You don't know how to run away."
Mrs. Green made us get back into our seats just at the edge of what I think must be near Fannie.
Craning to see, seeing tracks on both sides of our train. We saw downtown Flomaton from an angle.
People were everywhere. Things were busy around the depot. We off loaded the train to walk into a big old cavernous dome like waiting room filled with big light catching windows, forest green benches sat on marble tiled floors that allowed scuffing sounds as we milled about to look interested in things that we really weren't.
Restrooms smelled like pine tar and creosote.
Sounds of trains switching, bells clanging, men signal whistling, people talking and laughing, staccato clattering sounds of some kind of office machine, the depot was a world of sights and sounds of wonder to me.
I experienced sensory overload.
I may have hallucinated........without knowing what that meant.
Never heard that word until the 1960's.
Wallace and Flomaton Alabama was far away from San Francisco's Haight Ashbury Street with those hallucinogens.
Out back of the depot was the most beautiful little park with a fountain centered in a lily pond filled with goldfish. Some of our class threw pennies into the pond, not me, I had only a quarter.
A big magnolia tree gave beauty and shade to be a place of rest for wayfaring strangers to enjoy their time until the next trains going to destinations that-a-way.
We explored and fondled things that shouldn't have been, but nobody told us we couldn't.
I believe the adults and Mrs. Green knew this was a special time for her little charges to enjoy something that many would never again be privileged to. There at Flomaton Railroad Junction Depot in 1951 we shared a special blessing.
