The ‘Infamous’ GM&O Rebel

When I was a small child, my mother’s older sister – known to the family simply as ‘Sister’ – lived in Bogalusa, Louisiana. Mom and I often visited her, riding the GM&O streamline passenger train THE REBEL. The Jackson, MS train station, now preserved as an historical site, was located just off Jefferson Street up the hill from the State Fair Grounds. The photo above is an earlier photo of the Rebel, when the GM&O was the GM&N. Notice the Old Capitol cupola behind the station. This was during the war years (WWII), so the train was always filled with soldiers, who according to Mom, ‘adopted’ me for the trip.

The Rebel was a unique train according to railroading history, a first of it’s kind. Up until the Rebel, built in 1935, all passenger trains in the US were ‘articulated.’ This means that each rail car SHARED a set of wheels between the cars. Individual passenger cars could not be uncoupled – none added or removed without serious work. The Rebel’s cars were built as are all passenger cars today, with wheel trucks on both ends.

The Rebel also sported another ‘first’ for railroading – 5 airline-style HOSTESSES to cater to the needs of the passengers!

The Rebel was never know for its speed. The route from Jackson, TN to New Orleans, LA took 14 hours. Yes, this calculates to just under 35 miles per hour – but one must take into consideration the 55 STOPS it made along the way.

Speaking of stops – I remember one trip when we were traveling through typical rural southern countryside. The Rebel slowed down even slower. Looking out the window I saw an old woman waving something in her hand, as she trotted toward the tracks. The Rebel STOPPED and picked up her MAIL!

Being a railroad-minded child, I had my electric train. As a child’s toy, it simple went round and round an oval track. As a 3 and 4 year old, it greatly confused me that the Rebel LEFT the station heading RIGHT (south to Bogalusa) and RETURNED us to the station in Jackson heading LEFT. How did it turn around?

My mother loved to tell the (true) story of one return trip. I must have been no more than 3 at the time. She said that I refused to leave the station – until she led me up to the front of the train, where I could KISS the Rebel good-bye! Such has always been my fondness for trains!

The next time you’re in a bookstore, look for a book on American Railroading. You’ll find the Burlington’s Zephyr, Boston & Maine’s Flying Yankee, Illinois Central’s Green Diamond, and Milwaukee Road’s Hiawatha. Chances are you won’t find the Rebel – or if you do – only a scant mention. That unfairness always puzzled me. A few years ago, the sad reason for this slight came to light.

Unlike all the other glorious passenger trains of it’s day – the Rebel was designed and built for racial SEGREGATION! A schematic of a typical Rebel car, seen below, clearly reveals this. The smaller black section to the left has it’s own men’s and women’s restrooms – as does the larger white section to the right. (Schematic redrawn from an illustration in the GM&OHS NEWS).

Little 3 year old white boys in the early 1940s had no comprehension of this disparity. Therefore my memories of the Rebel are all beautifully positive – of happy times riding the rails – traveling to Bogalusa (a paper mill town) to visit my cherished aunt. And because of these trips, I still have a fondness for the sweet smell (to me) of a good ole paper mill. Ah, those were the days my friend!

 

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This post is in response to the Daily Post Challenge.

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The Hell-evator

© 2017 Bill Murphy

I once had a love/hate relationship with an elevator. I worked at the time in the sprawling McCarty-Holman 1920s era warehouse on Mill Street, in the Jitney Jungle corporate offices.

One gained access to our offices by a narrow flight of stairs built at an absurdly shallow angle. These much longer than necessary stairs zig-zagged thru four upward flights, divided by a short landing. Or – you could take a painfully slow, archaic elevator.

I use the term ‘elevator’ in a loose, technical sense. It could be best described as a metal cage. It invoked visions of a solitary confinement jail cell. But these doors ‘scissored‘ open and closed. Thankfully, the lower portion of the 3 cage-like walls were covered, but not the upper portions which revealed the stained brick walls of the elevator shaft, barely six inches away at most.

It was claustrophobic, no more than four feet square at the base. The load capacity of this rickety contraption was four.

More than a few people are nervous in any elevator, but this one had a quite higher than average fear-factor. Most folks took the stairs.

But I must say, this mechanical fossil had one redeeming feature; a beautiful art nouveau ceiling light medallion. The company closed in 2001, and I wanted that medallion, but it was not mine to take. Years later, fire took everything when the old building burned to the ground. Bitter/sweet memories of that old elevator remain.

Perhaps someday I’ll write a horror story featuring that infernal contraption. Unsuspecting souls will enter the prison-like cage and presses the button. Be it up or down, the devilish machine will always go DOWN. And as it descends faster and faster downward – the dirty brick walls appearing to be racing upward just inches away – it will descend faster and ever faster down into the very bowels of the earth. It makes your mind scream in terror.

That’s as much of the story as I care to think about right now!

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Aunt Penny

© 1994 by Bill Murphy

Divorce is not a common thing in my extended family. Of the fifteen children of my grandparents, only two aunts divorced, both due to wandering husbands. One of those couples later remarried. So when my first marriage failed – I took it hard. The marriage was a failure, and I felt like a failure. I was taught that marriage is for keeps.

The circa 1960 photo at left from a postcard, is NOT the subject above –  although anyone who knows her would swear it is. It’s not kosher to have pics of old flames /wives laying around.

A few years after that failed marriage, love and marriage redeemed themselves in the form of Helen Carol Ringer Rainey. She and her 3 daughters Liz 4, Tricia 2, and Lois – new born, became not just a part of my life, but the very center of my life. Please see the post, ‘The Year That Changed It All.’

One Saturday afternoon years after Carol and I married, our 4 grammar school age girls were spending the day with my Mom. To keep the tykes entertained, Mom gave them old family photo albums to explore.

Now my Mom and I are alike in that we seldom throw away anything.  The girls discovered a photo of a pretty, young bride. “Who’s this?” they innocently asked.

Now to understand my mother’s reaction – and her answer inspired by that reaction – you have to understand that she was old-school prim and proper. “W-W-Why – that is – ” she stammered, “that is – your – your – your –  Aunt Penny!”

The girls had found a picture of their dad’s first wife! To this day, we all continue to refer to her as ‘Aunt Penny.’

We were high school sweethearts, Aunt Penny and I. We came together through a simple misunderstanding. She and I were in the same history class. At the time, she had the hots for a boy who lived across the street from her grandfather 100+ miles north. The boy’s name was Billy Frye. As love-sick girls are apt to do, she’d written ‘Penny + Billy’ on the front of her notebook. Another of our class-mates spotted her little love notation, and assumed that this ‘Billy’ must surely be yours truly. So my buddy suggested that I invite her out on a double date. Our first date was on December 7th – Pearl Harbor Day.

I don’t know if I won out over the other Billy or if she simply opted for a Billy closer to home, because by the next weekend we were going steady. That second date was Friday – the 13th!

I suppose we were your typical 50s couple, doing all the silly stuff only adolescents dare. We talked on the phone endlessly about nothing, passed notes in class, walked the halls hand in hand, and made impossible plans. We were young and foolish, far too wrapped up in one another to be much a part of our high school scene. We claimed to be in love, yet neither of us truly understood the definition of real love. This failure did nothing to enhance our continuing relationship.

We wanted to marry right out of high school but got resistance from our parents. “Wait a year, maybe two.” If we’d waited two, we probably never would have married. She got a job in Jackson and off to Mississippi State I went to study aeronautical engineering, and to wait out that year.

I only missed two weekends coming home that year. Several of my hometown pals rode back and forth with me on occasion. Because I always left Jackson as late as possible those Sunday nights, one of them named my car ‘The Midnight Cannonball.’ Another replied, “At least the sun’s not in our eyes.”

The wedding was in her home. It lasted 12 minutes flat, reception following. I think I still have the 8mm home movies.

The divorce came seven years later. Of course there were good times in between, but I’ll save that for later. The last time we saw one another was the day she drove off into the sunset, April Fool’s Day of 1968. We had a thing about special dates.

Years later, Carol and I we were cleaning up after a successful garage sale when she commented, “Well now I’ve gotten rid of everything that once belonged to Aunt Penny.” “No you haven’t,” I replied, “You still have me!”

And she still does!

 

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