You’re Different South of the Tracks, Gandy

You’re Different South of the Tracks, Gandy

Larry G. Toerber

You’re Different South of the Tracks, Gandy

Larry G. Toerber

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

Copyright © 2024 by Larry G. Toerber 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.

I would like to dedicate volume one of this “Trilogy” to: My grandparents; Louis and Lydia My parents; Burnell and Sylvia My Beautiful Bride; Zelma Daughter; Jody Toerber/Clark Daughter; Heather Murrow Son; Scott Toerber Plethora of Grandchildren “Dang Neighbor Kids” All who were unknowing pixels and participants in: “The Storied Trek”!!!

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!

The first volume of my Trilogy is the story of a childhood that built character, fed by the elderly “intellect” sharing their “educational awareness”!!! I hope you find as I did, that it portrays a world of hard work tempered by simple rewards, shows how the “right stuff” can make even the bleakest moments feed personality. It’s brimming with recipes for smiles and intrigue!

The people and experiences presented in this book reflect the opinions and lifestyle observations that formed over 47 years of my railroading and ground transportation career. A few of the names have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals and their families.

The pictures placed throughout the book are a depiction of the time and activities. They are not necessarily accurate pictures of the events.

Contents The Trail Begins Building That Character.............................................. 11 Becoming a Farmer.............................................................................. 31 Military Enlistment Experience............................................................ 41 On The Railroad Trail of Becoming a “Gandy”...................................... 47 Railroad Trail Switched to the Welding Department............................ 69 Deer Lodge, Montana “Rookie” of Lines West Welding Gang............ 105 Missoula, Montana “Ka Boom”.......................................................... 139 Deer Lodge, Montana; The “Bump” is In............................................ 153 Transferred into the Signal Department............................................. 167 “Snaking Jack”.................................................................................... 241 Madrid, Iowa “High Trestle Bridge”.................................................... 281 The “Secret”....................................................................................... 289 Notes.................................................................................................. 293

1 The Trail Begins Building That Character I am here to provide Toerberisms and stories for proof of life to that ever elusive, never completely believable “we” story. That is my 47-year memorable alpha numeric magic trick. And like all magic tricks, it starts with a set-up, soooo.

Retrospect can be illuminating, it can be hilarious, it can be numbing, it can be sobering, it can be fruitful, it can gladden your heart, and it can drown oneself in despair! But I’ve always enjoyed looking back on my early days of pre railroad employment and find that I take enormous satisfaction in sharing my “storied” memories of the past and my reflections on how at that time, so poor, yet so family rich, so satisfying, so undeniably challenging, provided the mold I would fill with years of good destiny. My family, the Toerber Family, was not convoyed by monetary wealth and privilege. It was quite the opposite.

I come from a small Eastern Iowa town where almost everything tinged with one or more agriculture tenacles: cattle farming, hog farming, corn farming, livestock packing houses, and employees of big agriculture manufacturing; “Big Green” John Deere, “Big Red” Farmall, and Caterpillar, just to name a few. I grew up in an environment where everyone knew everyone else as well as their “personal business”. No one was a stranger! You might have been different, but you were not a stranger!

I and my family grew up “dirt poor” in a non-insulated square clapboard house “South of the Tracks”, Milwaukee Railroad tracks that tis, in the small eastern Iowa community of Oxford Junction. Still today, I can hear the distant rumbling of the freight and passenger trains train wheels clickity-clacking submersed The Trail Begins Building That Character 11

with the loud train horns as they passed east and west through our small town. Today, Oxford Junction is still an agriculture community, however it portrays a much smaller footprint. Time has evolved and left the town behind. There’s not much there!!!

My parents were married shortly after my father returned from active military service during World War II. They would move several times before settling on Oxford Junction, renting an older two-story home from a retired farmer. The home was tucked away on a tree canopied city lot in the Cooksville subdivision “south of the Milwaukee Railroad tracks” at the very south end of Oxford Junction. I was one of four active, creative, and energetic; some would say mischievous “Toerber” boys!

We had a wealth of inquisitive vigor. Our creative energies and mischievousness grew as we matured.

We “Toerber Boys” were to become just another pixel in America’s exploding “Baby Boomers” culture! The children of post WW II were commonly labeled “Baby Boomers” as that term is the primary and popular nickname for our age generation to this day. Oxford Junction, like every small town in Iowa, had their share of “youngin’s” that would fit the mold known as “Baby Boomers”.

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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!!!

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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 14 You’re Different South of the Tracks Gandy

fatty rendered leftovers were saved in a special tin can setting upon the kitchen stove. That would be used for cooking grease in the cast iron skillet when frying potatoes, chicken, wildlife, fish, etc. My family and I are still practicing the grease recovery activity today! It’s a very tasty tradition carried down… Thanks mom and dad!

The times were rough and tough, both mentally and physically. At an early age I felt like we, the Toerber Family, never really fit into the community. Throughout school, kids would use the terms, You’re Different, you’re a “Welfare Kid”, hey “Food Stamp Kid”, you live south of the tracks, and many more terms used as bullying techniques. It worked! The labels were derogatory verbal “rubs” and of course we kids would get physical; as fist fights, throwing a few elbows, bumping heads, and the planting of well-placed high-top Converse tennis shoes, would ensue periodically!

That “let’s get physical” scuffling would become an induced “Toerber Boy” characteristic throughout our youth. As for myself, it continued for years well after I was married. The verbal bullying terms: “Welfare Kid” and “Food Stamp Kid” became terms that drew on my mental fitness propelling my self-taught “Street Fighting” skills. Street fighting was a technique that drew me into defending my family pride. I soon enjoyed “mixing-itup”!!! We may not have been monetary rich folks, our food stamp money may not have been their same color, but we, especially me, had family pride!

The bullying didn’t really get intensified until I transitioned from the grade school building into middle school/high school building. That’s where the “big Kids” would begin strutting their stuff venting their well-known physical bullying and exercising creative initiation tactics on the underclassmen. Apparently, the underclassmen were supposed to “just take it”! At first, I accepted the personalized type of verbal bullying, but when it transitioned to derogatory family personal campaigns and physical exchanges, not sooo much. Exchanging knuckles ensued!!!

My rancorous street fighting skills became a well-known “trademark” throughout the area’s small towns. That tradition “stuck” with me for many years to include the first few years of The Trail Begins Building That Character 15

marriage. That word-of-mouth transmitted “trademark” coaxed other “robust” folks from the surrounding area into challenging my street fighting skills; mostly when I was out with my circle of buds and friends. It kind of reminded me of TV’s gunslinger analogy. There was always one more individual that heard via word of mouth about “Whisper’s” street fighting skills and decidedly hunted me down to compare his “wares”. I seldom came in “second”.

I’m sure you’re wondering if I ever had my “Lickins”. That would be a “Yessss”! I can recall one distinct event. A big ole boy found me in the back row at the Maquoketa Drive-In Theater. He and I exchanged the standard “test your wares” punches, then he made several well planted knuckles and feet upon my torso resulting in me swelling up so bad I could barely swallow water the next day!!!

I took a lickin and kept on tickin… After that escapade, I decided there wouldn’t be any preliminary dilly dallying around.

I just went full throttle street fight techniques. It was a much better strategy. Street fighting was a never-ending bare knuckled male curiosity.

There were several times I can remember, coming home from school with a shirt that was torn or ripped. My parents would be very concerned, requesting the name(s) of the kids that “done this to you”. We, my brothers, and I weren’t going to squeal on the perpetrators. That was never divulged, although retribution was plotted, executed, and enjoyed! Sometimes boxing gloves were added to the “planned” Lutheran Church Yard Sunday afternoon scuffles!

Probably one of the most memorable after school events was a group of school kids physically and verbally bullying myself. The event consisted of the “Bullies” utilizing the “Welfare” derogatory names, spitting on me, and planting a few knuckles. I took the “Lick-in”, but I was really PO-ed! As I walked home, I decided that if I was living with a rich family, it would all go away. There wouldn’t be any more verbal “Welfare Kid” and “Food Stamp Kid” terms. In my “swimming” dancing, creative mind, I knew I wouldn’t be picked on or bullied anymore.

16 You’re Different South of the Tracks Gandy

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.

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Jim was a Milwaukee Railroad signal maintainer at the Oxford Junction railroad depot. He traveled via an on-track putt-putt motor car or his private pick-up truck to conduct his railroad signal maintainer work. Not only was he a signal maintainer, but he was also a residential and commercial electrician in the surrounding area with the nickname “Sparky”.

He would tell me stories based on his daily railroad experiences and his electrician work while rolling small pieces of cigarette paper to form his own torpedo looking cigarettes from a red and black Prince Albert tobacco can. He would then light the cigarette that was now stuck to his lower lip and begin talking while the cigarette was still stuck to his lip. I was fascinated with his “floating” cigarette skills! It would be Jim’s shared railroad stories that offered me the seed of inspiration to leave Oxford Junction and explore a career in railroading. Although at the time, I didn’t realize that seed would grow into well over 47 years of fascinating travel and railroading experiences!!!

Throughout my formative youth years residing in Oxford Junction, I was always drawn to the railroad tracks, either hunting along the tree lined highly vegetative right-of-way or just walking along the tracks with my dangling black stringed cane type fishing pole, a bucket in hand destined for the lakes either side of town that were known as East Goose Lake and West Goose Lake. Each lake was approximately one mile from Cooksville.

During these treks a plethora of wildlife would be observed scurrying about in the vegetation, waterfowl could be observed and heard overhead, and most important when arriving on the shores of the secluded lakes, catching fish was plentiful. You had to be careful how many fish that you placed in your bucket, because you had to tote that extra weight approximately one mile back to the house!

There would be those trekking times when my dad, my brothers, and I would be walking and talking together along the railroad tracks. During those walking and talking fishing trips, we would be discussing his “military stories” or just plain ole father son stuff when he would stop and point to areas in the grass and vegetation where there was a wealth of wildlife cover, indicating

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we would explore those areas much more in-depth on one of our winter trekking and hunting activities.

We shotgun harvested pheasant, rabbit, quail, squirrel, snapping turtles, and a few ducks. Pheasant hunting was my favorite. There were hunting trips that were very bountiful. I would share my pheasants with the fire department for their once-a-year fin and feather feed and periodically with the folks residing in the elderly retirement housing flats at the north end of town. Some of those folks were on one of my three newspaper routes! Yes, newspapers were delivered door to door each day!

News wasn’t any type of electronic social medias such as we utilize today and we wrote in cursive… Hmmmmm, that’s a story for another day!!!

Mom and dad could cook all the wildlife “We” brought home.

Mom wouldn’t do any “cleaning” of the wildlife. Dad taught us boys the techniques and proper knives/utensils for harvesting and cleaning our specimens. Most of the wildlife were field dressed and then fine-tuned at home on a box crate in the dirt floored garage. I don’t remember harvesting deer; although, my older brother Breeze would hunt and harvest deer with a group of farm kids. My two brothers, Breeze and Mover still conduct their annual deer hunts. Me not so much. My hunting skills are the results of chasing “little white balls” across manicured prairies!!!

There were a couple other, even more delicious spring treats we Toerbers harvested and enjoyed, asparagus and morel mushrooms. In mid-May, hot humid days following a warm rain was the signal for us to put on our high-top five buckle boots, grab a brown paper bag, and go out and search for the most delectable food source: morel mushrooms. We would fan out in the local forested areas returning to our “secret” patches from our previous years of harvesting delectable treasures.

Morels bear no resemblances in either taste or appearance to the common button-shaped mushrooms, that most people are familiar, purchased from the local grocery stores. They are shaped like spongy little Christmas trees on a short white-Ish brown stalk. Typically, they are four to six inches high, however

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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 20 You’re Different South of the Tracks Gandy

watching chards of glass debris go flying was exhilarating. Not so much for dad as he would be a bit PO-ed…

Also, not knowing at the time, many years later I would be working for the Milwaukee Railroad as a signal maintainer, replacing broken pole line insulators! As I was “hooking” (climbing) the pole, it would instill a large smile across my face and thrust a chuckle, just a bit, as my past antics were now paying the “Happy Hooker” back…

Wapsipinicon (Wapsie) River was another body of water in the proximity, that flowed west to east approximately one mile south of Cooksville near the city of Oxford Mills. The river was a plethora of entertainment opportunities for the Toerber Boys and many other city folks, to go fishing, swimming, sunbathing on a sandbar, gathering freshwater clams, collecting crawdads, just spending hours exploring. One of my close ‘River-rat” friends was Lanny Hulke from Oxford Mills.

Here’s a bit of historical information pertaining to the city’s names Oxford Junction and Oxford Mills. Oxford Junction got its name from: Ox that “Forded” the Wapsie River, and the town was built where two railroads’ junctional, thus Oxford Junction.

Oxford Mills got its name from: Ox that forded the river and where there was a water driven mill constructed utilizing the flow of river water to turn the grain milling stones, thus Oxford Mills.

Now you know the rest of the story!!!

When the heat of the summer months began to shrink the water flow of the Wapsie, my friend Lanny and I would traverse the edges of the exposed sand bars gathering freshwater river clams from the shallows of the clear river water. Clams always left a distinct trail in the sand in pursuit of their food source.

He and I always utilized a small cloth bag to carry our treasures to the riverbank where we had a large brown gunnysack type bag resting in the water and anchored to a tree.

On one of our many trips of following the trails and collecting the large mussel specimens, his cloth bag became totally full, but he didn’t want to give up his pursuit, go back, and empty the bag in the big gunnysack.

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Lanny decided to start placing the clams in his swimming trunks. He knew that decision wouldn’t interrupt his pursuit of collecting a whole lot more of the large treasures than me. Wellll, that worked for a bit until one of the larger clams opened its shell and clamped upon his family jewel, penis that tis! Notta good.

Soon, he began yelling and screeching uproariously. I was on the opposite side of the large, exposed sand bar following trails in the loose sand. I couldn’t see what Lanny was doing, but I knew it wasn’t good.

He darted for the nearby exposed sandbar, pulled down his swimming trunks, grabbed another large clam, and began beating on the large clam attached to his penis. I was laughing hysterically now, knowing that had to really hurt as well as each impact would result in hurting worser yetter. I had my trusty Bowie hunting knife that I could’ve cut open the clam. But I sure wasn’t going to place my hands on his exposed crotch, arranging my large hunting knife to the precise area near his penis, and assist in cutting through the clam’s mussels. That clamped clam recovery effort, with no assisting sharp tools, is the only way I was seeing it!!!

The clamped clam soon released its hold upon Lanny’s penis.

He and I then began to visually scan up and down the river to see if there were any witnesses. Wouldn’t you know it, there were several folks fishing that observed the entire show!!! Thereafter, occasionally, I would ask Lanny if his wound was still black and blue. His short four lettered response wasn’t very polite! That story was told many times over the years throughout Oxford Junction and the surrounding communities. I’m sure each time the story was told, it grew in “size”!

Lanny would sell his collection of clams; however, I took mine back home. My dad would take the retrieved clams and remove the meaty mussel portion. That mussel would be placed in a onegallon glass pickle style jug with a bit of corn meal. The jug would be buried just below the surface of the soft soil in our garden.

The intent of burying the clams was to allow the meat to ferment a bit as well as become very “fragrant”. The fermented clam would be removed from the gallon jar in small quantities and toted along on our river fishing trips. The smell had a 22 You’re Different South of the Tracks Gandy

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 The Trail Begins Building That Character 23

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 24 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 The Trail Begins Building That Character 25

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, 26 You’re Different South of the Tracks Gandy

came over, spinning some of his electrical wizardry, and done some electrical rewiring to accommodate the electric roasters.

One of my most favorite Thanksgiving stories occurred when I had returned home from Montana for the holidays, taking a break from railroading in Montana. My railroad career resulted in taking me away from home for weeks and months. When I was away from home, I would call home on the “Landline”, a wall mounted phone centrally located in your home. That’s the only phone that was available in those days! Dad never answered the phone. That was mom’s pleasure. She enjoyed visiting.

Soooo, when I called home in my mischievous verbal fashion; mom would always answer the phone in her very polite voice: “Hi this is Sylvia”. I would always respond: “Hi mom, how’s pop?

Been getting any lately”? Her proverbial response always was the same: “Ohhh, I’m too old for that”! We would have a good laugh and then discuss what’s new with the family and folks in the neighborhood. We didn’t discuss grandparents as they were already deceased.

Sooooo, on one of my many Montana treks exploring what makes Montana towns unique, I found a book displayed for sale in a Livingston hotel window titled; 1001 ways to have sex. I knew I had to purchase that as a gift to present to mom at her next thanksgiving gathering. The book’s great feature was its independent front and back aluminum foil book covers equipped with a battery and electrical coil inside, sooo, when you opened the book as if to read the contents, it would shock the shxx out of you!

At our next Thanksgiving family gathering, I arrived home mid-morning from my long cross country vehicle trip. As I entered the front door of our house, the aromas of the prepared feast were upon me, exciting my appetite. Everyone was already standing around the kitchen visiting, laughing, shaking hands, tipping a “beverage”, and conducting holiday congratulatory hugging gestures.

You see, our two-story square clap board house had a kitchen that took up at least half of the first floor. The room also contained the legendary family style expandable oak table with The Trail Begins Building That Character 27

round back wood chairs. An oilcloth covered the entire length of the “opened” table. Not a tablecloth, an “oil cloth”!!!

There were several outbursts from the array of family: “hey Whisper we’re glad you’re back. How was the trip”? I acknowledged everyone and proceeded to tell mom I had purchased a book on one of my frequent travels that I thought would be very fitting for her. Mom reads a lot of books, mostly the religious type. She asked: “what was the title of the book”.

I exclaimed in a loud response; 1001 ways to have sex! That brought a huge round of laughs, as everyone knew of my mischievous telephone calls. Dad was all smiles laughing as well.

I told mom I would place it on her desk in the living room so she could read it later. Mom also has a never-ending curiosity!

The family had “set” the table with all the fixins. I was ready to say the Thanksgiving meal prayer, but mom was nowhere to be found. We all thought she went in the bathroom. Pretty soon there was a loud high pitched female vocal yelp and countless verbal dissertations being emitted from the living room, beginning with OUCH you little SOB! Then a lot of heavy foot stomping sounds just prior to her emerging through the living room arched doorway into the kitchen. She was PO-ed and had stomped the book to extreme “flatness”. That was just one ingredient in the Toerber Thanksgiving formula for happiness.

In the midst of our family laughter, I said an extra lengthy prayer forgiving mom for her not soooo nice outburst…

Mom’s tradition to feed and visit with whomever stopped by our humble abode would carry over into when the Toerber boys’ partying friends would stop by after a night of prowling and fellowsipping the spirits. “Those dang farm kids” would late at night, “crash” at our house on the front porch or back porch, rather than late night traversing the miles of crooked hilly two-lane native soil and gravel roads returning to their farm homes. My parents thought it was better to “sleep it off” rather than drive under the influence. Don’t try that type of pf friendly gesture today!!!

You see mom and dad never locked their house. The lock on the front and back door was a “Skeleton Key” type lock.

Everybody had those keys. Soooo, why lock the house? Our 28 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!!!

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