Depot Back Then

This was one of my stops on Saturday morning when I was a kid. My friend Van Callaway’s father worked at the ticket sales window. We stopped there for Van to mooch some movie money off his dad. Our next stop was Schillings Hardware. As soon as we entered the hardware we were faced with a big scale which was probably used in the hardware business. We weighed weekly. Then we went to the show. Our first stop at the railway ticket window to hit Mister Callaway for Van’s movie window, Now, I like to think we stood in the same place as James Andrew, head of the Yankees’ Andrew’s Raider’s, when he bought his ticket for a ride to Big Shanty (Kennesaw) where he and his men stole The General locomotive, the same locomotive they rode to Kennesaw, thus THE GREAT LOCOMOTIVED CHASE started, Which also reminds me a year or so later Van’s father was transferred to Daltron so the family lived there, near West Hill Cemetery in Dalton. Van was still preferred Marietta and came down every chance he got. Afterall, as a dependent of a Railway employee the ride was free. One time when he came down he asked me did I want to go back with him to his folks house and spend the night. Sure, why not? I bought a two way ticket and we rode the train to Dalton. We walked from the train station to the house they lived in. It was after dark. His parents hit the roof. They told Van he should have got their OK before inviting me. His father took me back to the train station and I rode the train back in the middle of the night. Well, shoot! Speaking of passenger trains reminds me of my friend Larry carrying his sister and two of her friends to the MHS football game on a Friday night. A train has stopped at the train station, thus, the diner car was blocking the street a block away. People were in the dining car eating with white jacket waiters going back and forth. Some of the passengers dining were looking at the cars that they were blocking. Larry’s sister and her two friends mooned them. Just choo choo rambling.