My Spaceship

This train engine was built by Glover Machine Works that was located in south Marietta. My grandfather worked there, my father worked there before my time, and I played there.

On Glover Street there was an old blind man named Charley and his sister that lived in an old unpainted shack behind Glover Machinery. When I was eight or nine years old on Sundays sometimes I would drop by and visit Charley and talk to him about my dad and his brothers growing up. He knew them all and remembered their antics. I wish I had retained what he told me.

Then I would leave Charley’s house and walk by their outhouse, which they had a clothesline going to the outhouse. It had two purposes: to hang clothes and to be a hand guide to lead Charley to the privy.

Behind the outhouse was a patch of woods. On the other side of the woods was a high cement or brick wall. And on the other side of the wall was the backyard of Glover Machine Works. In the middle of the yard was the above train engine. Then, it was not black; it was rust red-brown.

At the time I have seen Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon Saturday morning serials, not to mention a comicbook animal character, a rabbit like Roger Rabbit, I think, that had a spaceship.

On Sundays mid-afternoon I was climb aboard my spaceship and fly from one trouble spot in the galaxy to another and have hand to hand combat with the most hideous evil creatures that one could imagine. I always won. Good triumphed over evil again.