The year was 1953 in the town where I grew up, Staples
Minnesota. Mostly a railroad town but still a sleepy farming community too. I
was twelve years old and at that awkward age-- somewhere between a boy and a
young man. It was early spring, the icicles were melting and the water was
running in the streets. The sap was running and buds on the trees were swelling
in anticipation of summer. It was too early for baseball and to late for
skating and I was bored with winter and waiting for summer as I wandered uptown
daydreaming.
That late afternoon I had walked up to the depot to watch the
train come in. The son of a railroader, the trains were in my blood. This was
still the days of the steam engines and I had never grown tired of watching
those behemoth, black steel steam engines, belching steam and smoke as they chugged
into the station pulling a line of box cars that seemed to stretch for as far
as the eye could see. This train was a passenger train however and right behind
the coal and water tender there was a baggage car. On one end of the car was
the storage for all of the boxes and baggage, with a roll up door and on the
other end was the U.S. mail.
On this day I had perched myself, not in front of the depot
on those red cobblestones but on one of the baggage carts, that sat under a
canopy on the east end. They were green with red wheels and looked like huge
wagons, made to carry big loads. The steel wheels would click on the bricks as
they were pulled around the depot apron. I had watched them load them many
times but never with what they were going to be carrying today. The door on the
baggage car slid open and there were two men standing there at attention in
blue and red uniforms, white hats with rifles by their sides. Between them on
the floor was a flag draped casket.
I heard a noise to my right and there was a hearse, it’s
back door wide open like a big yawning mouth. The noise I had heard was an
elderly woman sobbing into her husbands shoulder as they made the transfer. I
shrunk back trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. The honor guard stood at
attention until the body was transferred to the baggage cart and then into the
hearse. I looked up the tracks and the engineer and the fireman were also
standing beside the engine, their caps over their hearts.
From studies at school I knew we were at war in some place
called Korea, but then it seemed like we had just got out of a war and now
another had started. I was immune
to the effects of it all, at my young age-- that is until that day. It was the
day that I realized what war could really do. That this young man had come home
at last, after giving all he had to give, for his country. That his grief
stricken parents had given their son, and others gave someone’s brother, someone’s
cousin, someone’s friend to keep our country free. This image has stayed with
me all of these years as if it was yesterday. I think of it every time I see
the Staples depot and now if you stand where I stood and look to the east you
can see the Veteran’s memorial, beside the railroad tracks and I think how
fitting.
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