You’re Different South of the Tracks, Gandy by Mennonite Press Inc

You’re Different South of the Tracks, Gandy

Larry G. Toerber

You’re Different South of the Tracks “Gandy”!!!

All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in retrieval system or transmitted, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission of Larry G. Toerber.

Additional copies of this book are available from the publisher. Discounts may apply for large-quantity orders.

Address all inquiries to:

Solution-ients L.L.C.

Larry G. Toerber

4604 East U.S. Highway 50 Newton Kansas, 67114

Ph: 620-837-9707

ISBN: 978-1-7330942-3-8

Library of Congress Control Number: Pending

Cover and Text design by: Larry G. Toerber and Gina Laiso

Printed in the USA.

Forward

I’m writing this Trilogy book based on my Milwaukee Railroad experiences that began as a “Gandy” and evolved into an investigative regulatory position with the United States Department of Transportation Federal Railroad Administration. The journey was an intriguing and educational awareness experience that keeps on giving, yet today! A day doesn’t pass by, where I’m not consulted and asked to share a story or my knowledge pertaining to my Milwaukee railroading activity or maybe stories pertaining to my federal government accident/ incident investigations involving railroad operating practices, signal systems, or new and novel technical ground transportation public safety issues. I’ve always enjoyed sharing my wealth of “Toerberized” short stories!!!

As my family grew, I would share with the Toerber family, railroad families, circle of friends, especially my spouse Zelma, and our three children (Jody, Heather, and Scott) those colorful descriptive “Toerberized” stories describing my rich railroading experiences and the areas of ground transportation my pro-active public/private partnerships quietly touched and affected. Welll, sometimes not quietly!!! During the era as a federal investigator, I was not allowed to visit or discuss my activities with the press or other editorial publications.

Also, as time passed, those “Toerberized” stories of the people’s lives and areas I’ve touched or encountered grew when repeated by family members and friends during mealtimes, neighborhood gatherings, golfing, reunions, block parties, fellowshipping activities, and java induced men’s needlepointing. The stories propagated “wings”, soooo my family and friends, mostly my daughter Jody, prodded and encouragingly decided it was time for me to write all those colorful history making stories into a book format so they could be enjoyed by many more folks other than our family and friends.

With a bit of apprehension, I finally agreed that when I retired, I would venture into authoring and publishing a collection of “Toerberized” stories into a book!

Sooo, here goes volume one of “Toerberized” stories like a long freight train rumbling through the past, emblazoned with names, slang terms, and slogans from every region, with analogies that vividly describe evolving ground transportation, both rail and roadway. The very ground and enduring grasp railroads demonstrated, provide the love, folklore, and untold stories for today’s American Railroad lives as well as the Toerber family!

My select collection of 47 plus years of stories beginning from my very early dusty “You’re Different South of the Tracks” Milwaukee Railroad “Gandy” trail, thru today describes people, places, cities, towns, railroad accidents/incidents, investigations, circumstances, and the plethora of colorful unique personalities that offered the rich and vibrant pixels of my very creative, entertaining, and rewarding railroad career.

There are many more “Toerberized” stories than can be offered. While not all stories assembled from my railroading career could be included, the most enjoyable, colorful, and important behind the scenes “history making events” are included. Sooo, enjoy the read as the “tracks” begin in Oxford Junction, Iowa and meander through many states!!!

I tell of a time, places, evolving cultures, and a way of life long gone but still “swimming” around in my indelible memory. My retirement has allowed me to fulfill the urge to describe and share that Toerberized” treasure trove, lest it be lost. My railroading was quite a “caper” through technology evolving history, but the basic human instinct to share feelings of history written through experiences, is the excitement of it all, as I chronicle on my remembered pleasures and remarkable legacy!

At that time, Oxford Junction was a small farm community of approximately 620 residents dissected east to west by two Milwaukee Railroad tracks and north to south by U.S. Highway 136, a two-lane asphalt surfaced road that zigged and zagged across Iowa. The business community consisted of three blocks of thriving commercial activity supported by folks from the many small Bohemian cultured farms surrounding the city as well as we “city slicker” folks that lived in the town and commuted to work in some of the much larger metropolitan areas such as Cedar Rapids and Davenport/Quad Cites areas. That populous supported six bars!!!

My father worked five days a week, eight-hour days, and some weekends at the Clinton Engines manufacturing plant in Maquoketa. It was a large farm and commercial business community approximately twenty miles east of Oxford Junction. Dad’s fulltime employment would cease shortly after moving to Oxford Junction as Clinton Engines was sold to a wealthy investor who downsized the manufacturing processes.

The investor’s immediate reaction was to reduce the number of employees required to produce the small gasoline engines. The resultant “layoff” had a large ripple effect throughout the area as Clinton Engines employed hundreds of male and female folks from the surrounding small agriculture communities.

I don’t remember my father being employed there after. Dad was silently struggling with the loss of his brother Mearl, listed as a WW II soldier missing in action (MIA) shortly after he arrived in Cambridge, England. My parents and grandparents went to their graves not knowing how Mearl perished.

Many years later I discovered the answers to Mearl’s untimely death. He was one of many U.S. Soldiers that perished participating in a secret military mission off the coast of Slapton Sands, England known as Exercise Tiger. It was one of several exercises conducted in preparation for D-Day landing. The entire “Exercise” went horribly wrong and was kept secret, buried in history along with at least 750 soldiers. I wrote and published the “untold story” in a book titled “Exercise Tiger the Silent D-Day “Link” of World War II”. It’s a must read!!!

While residing in Oxford Junction our family enrolled in the “Soldier’s Relief Program” where we would receive federal monetary assistance and food commodities once a month. The Program would transition into what we know today as Welfare. We were known as “different” because we were a “Welfare Family”!!! Our family was berated by the rumor-ized and disparaging term. I hated that offensive term…

We were Welfare recipients living “south of tracks” in smalltown America, where everyone knew everybody’s business. Oxford Junction wasn’t any different. “Welfare Family” was a demonized derogatory description labeling us as lazy mooching “third class” citizens. Our family was very industrious, living on practically nothing monetarily. We were scratching a living so to speak growing and harvesting two large vegetable garden plots.

We also received food stamps, just barely making “ends meet”. Mom and dad would order our clothing through mail order catalogs such as Spiegle, Sears, and Montgomery Wards. The cycle of clothing would be handed down (hand-me-downs) from brother to brother. They never fit properly, but we were excited to have “new” clothes! Occasionally, we were lucky enough that one of the farm families from the surrounding area would drop off their used clothing “leftovers” for us boys to “fight” over”.

Our family was thrifty in many ways. Our kids now a days can’t even imagine thrifty “dirt poor” folks. Recycling and repurposing were simply second nature. To this day my kids call me the “Repurposing Guru” … Solid waste was almost nonexistent. We reused all bottles, paper bags (yes, paper bags then, not the plastic bags of today), glass jars, and tin cans. The jars and bottles were used for canning garden produce as well as fish, pickling food, and storage of other important items. The tin cans held everything from used nails, dried reclaimed garden produce seeds, paper packets of left over garden seeds, marbles, crayons, recovered bolts, screws, and many more small loose items, all viewable when the needed visual search began.

We were taught that if you purchased something take care of “it” because “it” should last forever or so close to forever, we would then repurpose the item. If we had bacon for a meal, the

The distance of my walk from school to my house in Cooksville was uphill and downhill, approximately a distance of one mile, soooo I had plenty of time to plot my decided bully mitigating strategy. The more I walked the more my creative mitigation was imagined. When I arrived home, I proceeded to tell mom and dad the great news that would mitigate the bullying; they could adopt me out to a rich family!!!

Wellll, not so much. That didn’t go as well as I had planned and imagined. My mom beat me with “my” own plastic wiffle ball bat, lathered with a litany of teared induced high pitched verbal parental guidance. After what seemed to be hours of physical and verbal education, I decided that I would remain a “Welfare Kid” in the dirt-poor family culture, only until I graduated from high school. No more dreamt-up bully mitigating strategies; for nowwwww!!!

I felt wounded by society. In this rancorous activity, I did make some very great friends. One’s heart is warm with the friends you make and better with those friends that you make where you’re going. I knew my destiny was outside Oxford Junction! The big boy’s bullying B.S. did reside a bit before I graduated from high school, but it never resided in my mind.

One by-product of the bullying B.S. resulted in me having more high school female friends than male friends. To this day, that group of female friends and I still communicate resulting in annual “Class of 69 Tailgater’s” reunions where we meet in one of Eastern Iowa’s picturesque settings, discussing family, kids, as well as a few historical “remember-when” tall tales over a bit of the “spirits” provided by “brown-water” … Ahhhh, what great colorful formative mental and physical youth memories now matured!

Another Cooksville Kid memory was we the Toerber family weren’t rich enough to own a black and white TV. Color TV wasn’t available yet… If we wanted to watch a bit of TV, we would take a hike through Cooksville’s tree canopied asphalt two lane street to one of our neighbors in the “hood” who had a TV. There were two families: Earl Houston and Jim Furne. We knew Jim Furne and his family were rich because they had a TV! They also had a pickup truck and a car parked out in front of their fancy mobile home.

there are years when the temperatures and humidity are perfect for producing eight-to-ten-inch treasures.

There are various recipes for cooking these exquisite “treasures”. Mom would have dad go out and cut asparagus from the large patch at the end of the garden, to be cooked as a side dish. Next mom would place the largest cast-iron skillet over medium heat on the kitchen stove with several well-placed spoons of sliced butter. The mushrooms would be rinsed slightly under the kitchen faucet, sliced in half, and then dusted with ordinary white flour. After resting each sliced morel on wax paper for a bit, the morels would be placed face down in the skillet. Frying up to a light brown crispy consistency was the intent and then served with a large marshaling of fresh cooked asparagus topped with dancing skating butter slices.

This exquisite meal source has been handed down and is still a spring tradition with my current Kansas family, as they “can’t wait” for the early spring treasures that are hidden away in the decaying deeps under the elms and cottonwoods. In mid-April here in south central Kansas following warm rains is when the hot humid days’ offerings are hunted and harvested. When you enter the “forest” you can almost smell the aroma of the musty morel mushrooms!!! That musty smell always triggers images of my childhood morel mushroom hunting experiences.

My youth residing in Cooksville, is where I enjoyed and broadened many outdoor experiences and activities, so I really didn’t get involved in watching much TV or listening to the countertop radio tuned to WMT AM radio station. To this day, I still enjoy outdoor experiences, watching vistas with a spirited “soda”, rather than “color” TV and social medias! You see, our family in Cooksville didn’t go to the store to purchase “supplies”. We Cooksville poor folks lived predominantly off the land, hunting, fishing, and growing our own vegetables and fruit in the family garden.

Occasionally, as we were trekking along the tracks destined to one of our favorite fishing holes, I would have to stop and pick up a rock and throw it at the railroad pole line’s green insulators making a large “smash” if I was lucky enough to strike the insulator. The sound of the rock striking the glass insulator and

pungent arrogance to me but was a “had to have moment” for large fish in the deeps of the pooled Wapsie River currents, enticing large channel cats and mudcats to suck down the “hooked” fermented mussels. Catching and reeling in these large aquatic river “creatures” was exhilarating as well as another Toerber food source.

We never ate any of the freshwater clams, however many years later when I was railroading in Deer Lodge, Montana, I and a few Montana natives attended a Legion sponsored “freshwater clam bake”. I sampled many steamed baked clams. They were delicious! I often wondered why we, the Toerbers, didn’t eat the Wapsie River clams.

The clam shells were stored in a large wooden crate in the garage to be repurposed, yes repurposed!!! During the very frigid winter months the Wapsie River water would consist of a very thick layer of ice, perfect for ice fishing. Dad, my brothers, and I would trek to the river equipped with an axe, two-man cross-cut saw, gunny sack of clam shells, a spear, and our trusty hunting knives intent on ice fishing.

Ice fishing was a delicate process!!! Not so much… We would use the axe to chop a starter hole through the thick layer of ice in our secret spot. Once the hole penetrated the ice the twoman saw was utilized to saw open a larger square from the ice. The large three-foot square section of ice was pushed below the water’s surface disappearing downstream.

Now was our opportunity to repurpose the saved clam shells. The intent was to drop the clamshells into the dark murky watery hole with the white portion of the shell facing up as it rested on the river’s bed below. The sun reflecting off the white passive sunlit shells, lit the river bottom!!! It worked marvelously. Without the white spotted bottom, the dark colored backs of the slow-moving fish were very difficult to identify.

Nowwww, the fish were very visible as they passed over the white clam shells. We placed our long handled four barbed spears approximately six inches below the water’s surface. As the fish slowly passed through the white lit opening, we would spear the aquatic treasures. The fish we speared always tasted better

from the wintery frigid depths of the river than during the spring and summer.

I mentioned earlier that we raised a plethora of garden produce throughout the summer and in preparation for the fall holiday season. Our garden patch consisted of two city lots. Every spring dad would contact Carl Ott, a north-of-the-tracks resident who had a small Ford tractor and two-bottom plow. Carl would spend all morning plowing the two-lot patch and then place a huge “drag” behind the tractor to smooth out the freshly plowed soil. The aromatic therapy from the fresh plowed soil was exquisite! It induced the planting spirit throughout the Toerber family. When Carl had completed his artistry of manicuring the fresh plowed garden soil, he would set and visit with us about his “other” gardens yet to be plowed. You see, I think he was a farmer that moved to town that just couldn’t stop being a farmer.

Our family didn’t observe many traditional holidays or birthdays however, Thanksgiving holidays were a special family time at the Toerber house. Mom would always have an array of cooked wildlife, pickled fish, a plethora of produce from our large garden, and occasionally dad and mom would splurge with a fresh domesticated mallard duck purchased from a local farm.

Thanksgiving was probably the most special to us boys as well as the array of other folks “Just Dropping by to say Hi” expressing thanks to those “darned Toerber kids”, friends, and extended family. Again, Thanksgiving meal was a large sampling of our garden produce we harvested throughout the spring and summer season to include an array of the wild berries and fruit we harvested from our garden patch.

Mom didn’t serve the traditional turkey for Thanksgiving because that meant going to Coon’s Corner grocery store and purchasing the bird. We didn’t have the money to bird splurge. One of the “neighbor kids” Larry Brauer, was an avid racoon hunter for pelt harvesting in the furrier industry. I don’t know what Larry did with the carcasses, but dad would always contact Larry before his scheduled hunting trips and request two young racoon carcasses. Dad had his own “expert” way of conducting the final trimming and cleaning of the carcass before they were placed in our large thick-walled General Electric chest style

You’re Different South of the Tracks Gandy

freezer located on the back porch. Just before Thanksgiving mom would remove the raccoon from the freezer and place them in the refrigerator for a slow thaw.

When the thaw of these treasures was completed, dad would lay the deep red meaty trophies on the kitchen table opening the stomach cavity removing all the fatty tissue he could reach. The white-Ish yellow strips of fatty tissue on the external areas of the meaty trophies were removed with a very sharp “skinning” knife.

This is where mom took over the process. She had a large tan Coon’s Corner crockery bowl placed on the table where she would fill it with old dried out stale home-made bread, mostly bread crusts, welfare commodity raisons, apples from our orchard cut up in small chunks, commodity corn meal, and an array of seasonings she sprinkled across the mound of stuffing. The concoction was hand blended adding home-made chicken broth until the consistency was gooey and sticky. The aromatic therapy seduced you to sample the “Fix-ins”!

Well, not soooo much, as mom wanted all the significant seasoned parcels she could, to pack the racoon carcasses chest and stomach cavities. The remaining stuffing that didn’t fit into the cavities was now transferred into a special bread pan so it could be independently baked in the oven next to the other “Fix-ins”. She would use some Coon’s Corner meat counter white cotton string to “tie-up” and close the open racoon cavities. The raccoon was now placed in a large roaster that mom parked on the bottom shelf of the old Westinghouse refrigerator in the back room. The next day, the awaiting Thanksgiving treasures were ready.

In the weee hours of Thanksgiving Day, she would pre-heat the oven to her pre-determined temperature placing the large roaster and as many side dishes as would fit on the oven racks. Mom and Dad slept downstairs and us boys slept upstairs. As the array of seasoned food sources began their heated and baking journey, the whole house filled with the exquisite cocktail of aromatic therapies spewing from the oven. It wasn’t long before we were all milling around the kitchen and large open living room setting up card tables for the soon to be baked side dishes and fruit pies. The large square oak table resting in the dining

area of the kitchen was “opened up” adding four leaves to allow maximum surface area for the large spread of food sources.

Dad and Mom would be drinking their coffee and us boys a glass of water or glass of milk from green-Ish blue quart fruit jars. You see, the milk was mixed from commodity dry powdered milk. The remnants of the powder, attached to the upper part of the fruit jar, that leaves a ring of dark white foamy “stuff”. I did not drink too much of that concoction! It had a weirdly strong metalish taste to my south-of-the-tracks sophisticated palate...

As noon arrived mom began unpacking the oven and removing her club ware pots and cast-iron pans from the stove’s surface, filling in the assigned spots on the large oak family style dining table. When she removed the large roaster, the center piece of our Thanksgiving feast so to speak, it was placed on the wood countertop next to the kitchen stove. Mom cut the cotton string, opening the racoon cavities. She would scrape out all the stuffing and place it into the large tan crockery bowl where later, when the stuffing cooled down, it would be disposed of. It wouldn’t be consumed!

The intent of stuffing the racoon was for the bread to draw all the remaining fatty wild tastes from the carcass’s meat and allow the carcass to absorb/exchange all the fruity seasonings mom had placed in the mixture. It worked exquisitely!!!

The Toerber family Thanksgiving dinner went on for hours as the array of other folks “Just Dropping in to Say Hi” toooo you know those “darned neighbor kids”, friends, and extended family I mentioned earlier. It went on all afternoon. Mom was in her wheelhouse. She couldn’t turn away any of them without a sampling of her home cooking and racoon morsels!!! Word got around how the Toerbers’ served up exquisite “Coon” for thanksgiving rather than turkey.

Soooo, each Thanksgiving more folks just wanted to stop by and say, “Happy Thanksgiving” and mom was more than willing to fellowship with the “neighbors”! As time passed mom was cooking four raccoons for our “Extended Family” style Thanksgiving in electric roasters that neighbor folks had donated to mom and dad. Jim Furne, now residing north of the tracks,

You’re Different South of the Tracks Gandy

house was open to all! Soooo, when mom and dad would get up around nine-Ish each day, they would do a head count to see who the sleeping might be-over. As the “temporary squatters” would awaken, mom would make sure they had at least some toast with commodity provided peanut butter.

It wasn’t long before those darned farm kids’ parents became familiar with the “temporary squatters” routine. Soon mom was fielding phone calls from the concerned farm parents checking to see if “so and so” was at the Toerbers and the status…. Boy, as today’s parenting, you definitely couldn’t allow the “temporary squatters” routine!!!

That routine continued long after the Toerber Boys left home. I remember mom telling me that she finally had to lock the house, because she and dad didn’t feel comfortable with the new group of kids crashing at the house. She didn’t know any of them or their parents.

I don’t know if mom and dad knew at the time but embracing the “open door” policy for all the students and young adults was gradually mitigating the bullies’ performances. Some of those farmers ensured my parents had farm fresh eggs and other fixins to accommodate the “temporary squatters” late morning appetites. Warm meal warm friends!!! The “fall” of the bullying routine had begun! There were a few holdouts, but for the most part, derogatory manners were changing. The richness of friendly neighbors fellowshipping is still one of my most favorite vivid positive Cooksville memories!!!

You’re Different South of the Tracks Gandy