Thursday Morning Adventures

This train engine is in downtown Marietta, close to the Visitor’s Center and the Marietta History Museum. It was made here in Marietta at Glover Machine Works, who made war things since the Civil War and they also made train engines.

My grandfather was a machinist for Glover Machine Works and my father’s first paying job was with Glover Machine Works. From the Civil War until fairly modern times the Glover family ruled… they were the elitist of the elite in Marietta. There has been more than one Mayor Glover in Marietta and any prestigious name in Marietta got a little more fancier if their child married into the Glover family.

The Glover Machine complex was only a few blocks from our home. In my grammar school years on some Sundays I would slip over to the complex and climb over a brick wall in the back and play on the above train engine. Then it was a red/brown rust by sitting un-cared for in the middle of a big work yard. At the time there was a rabbit cartoon character and I don’t remember its name, which was sort of a hare Buck Rodgers. He would have adventures in space in his rocket ship that looked a lot Buck Rodgers’ small spacecraft. On Sundays, sometimes when I had nobody to play with I would assume the role of the Rabbit and the above old train engine was my space ship. We conquered many a Martian and zapped them into nothing… dirty aliens!

But today when I was looking at the old engine I see it is smaller than the average locomotive engine you see. If it was painted blue you would think it was “The Little Engine Who Thought He Could”.

A quick mini hasty research on the Internet found that small train engines were for logging. One learns something new every day.

I had a doctor’s appointment this morning with my cardiologist. It was a post-op visit. His nurse and I had a time defining what it was… just a matter of wording . I said it was a pre-op and she said when my surgery and I said it was two weeks ago then she assumed he found something wrong and is going back in…and I said “What for?” It was sort of a “Who’s on first” kind of communication until she realized when I said “Pre-op” I was meaning “Post-op”.

And the doctor came in and was pleased with my progress and sent me on my merry way.

When I am in downtown area I like to walk around in downtown Marietta and see how things are changing, progressing, or digressing or whatever. In the surrounding I grew up in I feel very comfortable.

And there I stood, in front of the Glover Machine Works train engine trying to figure which angle I could get the best picture.

Afterwards, I walked all over downtown. I went up and down side streets, alleys, and more or less checked things out. When I got within one block of where I parked my truck an elderly lady – not too elderly, in her 60s anyway, was trying to open a SUV’s door my aiming a remote key at it. She asked me if I had a cell-phone. Which I did.

I handed the cell-phone over to her and she told me she is a City of Marietta employee and an old man that could hardly walk went there for a court appearance. But! It was the wrong court… his summons was not for the City Municipal Court but the County Superior Court. After walking so long to get there, he was about to collapse, he did not think he could walk back to his car. The county court house is just across the street from her office, but now he was late. The lady, got on the phone and talked to the right people with the county and got his court appearance postponed to the next schedule time (If I understood correctly) and now she volunteered to walk across the Square and get his car for him. And now she couldn’t get it opened.

With my cell phone she called her office and nobody answered. Then she called the lady that sit next to her and she wasn’t there either and when either one of them are not there, the system automatically switches the call to the other one. So, it was switched to her own desk, and her own voice explained to herself that she was not at her desk, please leave a message at the signal. We both cracked up on that one.

Then she called her boss and explained the situation and her boss went to the outer boss and brought the lame man in to explain to her now to open the car. It still would not open. The lady’s boss volunteered to drive him over to his car.

So, she thanked me ever-so-much and I told her that is why I like Marietta. I could not imagine an employee for the City of Atlanta going out of their way to help someone get back to their car or even caring. She looked like I struck an emotional twang in her heart.

I left and drove to the Federal Credit Union near the base. I had some checks to deposit.

I was the only customer there. Five or six tellers and I was their only customer. One of them asked could she help me.

I gave her the checks and my checking account deposit slip. She was about to do her thing with her key pad when I said, “That was the only kind of deposit slip I have, I don’t want it in my checking, I want it in my savings.”

She snapped a Saving deposit slip off a pad and gave it to me without saying a word. I filled it out, all but the account number and said, “I still don’t know the account number.”

“You said you want it in your Share account. It is right there!” Pointing at three numbers on the checking account deposit slip.

“Does share mean savings?” I asked.

She seemed to have rolled her eyes and gritted her teeth and I think I heard some kind of “yes” through her, what I imagined, gritted teeth. She hastily filled it the numbers for me and keyed it all in and gave me a deposit receipt.

Once I had the deposit receipt in my hand her expression was happy and warm enough to melt butter. Such a quick change. She said, “Have a nice day.”

When money was not the issue she was nice. Go figure.

But isn’t that something. One employee for the City of Marietta go for blocks to help somebody out and another teller acted like I wanted her to move Heaven and Earth to fill out a deposit slip that I didn’t understand.