This engine was made by Glover Machine Works, where my grandfather worked as a machinist  and my father worked there as one of his first jobs.

We lived on Manget Street, near the intersection of Glover Street.  A lot of times on Sunday, finding myself alone I would explore in the nearby woods, which was behind Glover Machine Works.  I usually climbed a brick all and on the other side jumped intro the machine works’ back yard.  It was a very big green grass area, at my age and size it looked as big as a football field.  With no one around.

In the middle of the green grass was a train engine.  By the size, I think it was this one. Then it was brown, covered with rust..  I usually climbed up in the pilot pit, or engineer’s section and pretend I was in a spaceship fight enemy’s spaceships.  That was a generation before Star Wars, I was ahead of my time.

When I got bored, I would climb back over the brick wall, into the woods where Skipper, my white spotted part collie/birddog was waiting patiently waiting on me.  

Would take a different route out of the clump of woods or plum trees.  If the wild plums were in season I would pull me some of those.  Also in the same area, there were a lot of tree mice in little nests.

I came out of the woods behind Charlie’s house.  Charlie was an old blind man.  His pupiless (?) eyeballs protruded outwards.  I came out of the woods by his outhouse.  A clothesline hooked on to the outhouse and led to the back porch.  Charlie had to hang onto the clothes line to guide him to and from the outhouse.

Charlie and his sister lived in a small unpainted frame house and were poor as dirt.

I like to drop by and visit with him.  He had a good memory and lived there as a young man and told me a lot of wild stories at my father and his brothers.  According to Charlie, they stayed in trouble.

Unfortunately, I have a short retention memory, so all those stories died with Charlie.

Years later, after we moved out of that area and I became a teenager I forgot about Charlie.  One evening after dark my car broke down and I went into a Taxi stand, which is now a free standing vitamin store and Charlie was behind the counter as a dispatcher.  He knew Marietta like the back of his hand, I’m sure he did well.

Daddy told me a few years that Charlie and his sister died and was buried in Potters Field, off Allgood Road.  But a lot of the bodies had to be removed to make way for the new expressway, I-75.

Everything  changes.