by John Dodge Meyer

They don't have cabooses on trains anymore. I'm not exactly sure why that is, but I have to say that on that rare occasion when I do get stopped at a RR crossing and have a chance to see the freight train roll by, I kind of miss that little red house on steel wheels disappearing down the tracks like some end of the parade clown street sweeper. I'm also actually surprised at my nostalgia for cabooses since my history with them is... well, checkered, and railroad tracks and trestles are in many ways... haunting places.

My Junior High was a good mile and a half from our home on Milwaukee's West side. You could walk the squared off grid of streets to and from school, OR there was a very convenient rail line that made a perfect diagonal, a block from home to a half block from school. Not only would you save time, you could also do all those stupid thirteen year old things you were prone to do, hidden from judgmental adults.

This was the same track we would use to go to afternoon Braves baseball games in the Spring and Fall of the late 1950's. We'd sneak out of junior high at lunch, scramble down the embankment into a dark world of anonymity and walk hidden from view in the wide trench like depression through an industrial area further downtown. It had a lonely, spooky feeling with those double tracks seemingly going nowhere and the heavy smells of brewery malt towers, foundry dust and stock yards; a typical mid 20th century Milwaukee brew, an aromatic fit for Shakespeare's three witches. It was the price we happily paid for our baseball obsession. So when the out of sight railway passed County Stadium we'd hop up, stand tall, join the throngs headed for the park and buy our twenty- five cent bleacher seat tickets. Now all we had to do was spend the rest of the afternoon heckling big league outfielders while trying to stay away from the truant officer.

Those railroad tracks were a little secret between me and my buddies. No one else ever came here on foot. They probably thought there was nothing here for them. But this was a shortcut to invisibility. A place where all that you were and all that you pretended to be were laid bare. We would share a can of beer freed from the frig; perfect for facing another boring day at school, or put pennies on the tracks in hopes that we would find them turned to copper goo in the next day or two. We'd swear at the top of our lungs, have spitting contests, pee anywhere we wanted and generally act like the prisoners of puberty we were. Mainly, the tracks were a respite from the prying eyes of teachers, parents, neighbors and all the rules and regulations imposed on out of control kids like us.

On one mid winter afternoon me and my best friend Scott were walking the tracks back home after school. It was a particularly dreary day; low clouds and temperature just cold enough to be aggravating. We were passing one of the cigarettes I'd snuck out of a pack on my gym teacher's desk after final period and making snowballs and throwing them at nothing in particular. When we heard a train whistle cut the frigid air from just around the next bend, instinctively we traded devilish glances, got rid of the cigarette and immediately reached down and started packing more snowballs!

The author as a youth
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Within a minute the big diesel engine appeared around the hidden corner, lumbering along and looking menacing as hell. After trading what I know was an apprehensive glance, we none the less kept walking as innocently as possible toward the oncoming monster while cupping snowballs in our hands (after hiding one or two others in our jacket pockets). As it came within range we unloaded on the front window glass of that engine and then the side windows; perfect hits, doing no harm really, but giving us a great deal of temporary juvenile delinquent satisfaction.

That's one of the great things about attacking a moving train with snowballs, right? You don't really have to worry about doing any damage, but you get to make your powerful youthful anti-establishment statement without any consequences, right?

The train kept rolling by and we kept walking and laughing about what we'd just gotten away with. In a minute or so, the caboose came in sight. Another mischievous look; no words necessary! We quickly packed a couple more snow bombs and waited until the caboose was just past us so we could hurl them at the back door. Just as we turned and cocked our arms to let loose, we saw him! A burly, menacing looking human with the biggest sling shot I had ever seen in my life! He had that thing pulled back as far as it would stretch and it was aimed right between my eyes! It was a moment of sheer terror. I thought for sure he was going to let loose of that thing and who knows what manner of projectile he had loaded in it; maybe a marble shooter or steel bearing ball!

For a brief second we were all frozen in that mutually aggressive pose. Slowly, out of sheer instinctual self preservation, Scott and I lowered our arms and let the snowballs slip out of our fingers. The beefy boss conductor kept a bead on us until that cute little red caboose finally disappeared around the next bend. Aspiring young punk that I thought I was, involuntarily I exhaled and let my mother's wise words pierce my thick skull:

"Better safe than sorry, dear!"

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John Dodge Meyer: I was raised in the Midwest, came of age in the mid 60's on the West Coast and moved South in that banner year 1968. I've been a television performer, an award winning video & film writer/producer/director/editor, a college professor, a sculptor, an historic preservationist and now a published writer. Some would say a "generalist." Others might call it a "dabbler." William Burroughs described it as "somewhere between the deviant and the dead from boredom!" Whatever it's called; what really matters are the stories. Now living in the high desert of Central Mexico, I write those stories, as Hank Williams would say, "the only way I know how."

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