Casey Jones
I met Marlene Oxender last week. I found her to be passionate and quite a fireball. A great ambassador for the town of Edgerton and her brother Stevie. Go Bulldogs!
I have said before I love West Bend and your area which is rural but has many small towns. I love smaller schools. Where I live in Grabill we are just a suburb of Fort Wayne. When I was in school our athletic conference consisted of eight schools in Allen County none in Fort Wayne. The competition was keen. Our biggest rival was only 2 miles away, and today I still hate Harlan. We had single class basketball and always drew Northside or Southside. In 50 years we never won a sectional game that I know of.
I love train songs there were several that were very popular.
“The story about a brave engineer Casey Jones was the roller’s name on a 6-8 Wheeler he rode to fame. Caller called Casey about half past 4. He kissed his wife at the station door. He climbed in the cabin with the orders on his hands said, This is the trip to the promised land”
The Illinois Central Bullet, now Amtrak, runs from Chicago to New Orleans via Bloomington, Springfield, Carbondale, Memphis and all points south. My son lives in Bloomington, and I was there one beautiful summer night about 9:00 when she stopped downtown to board passengers. My granddaughter worked at Emack & Bolio’s, a small ice cream shop downtown, just a few blocks from Illinois State University.
She had invested a lot in the store, with displays in the plate glass windows, and the walls. We were in the patio when people started walking by. A train was stopped right beside us. It was the train my granddaughter had taken to Southern Illinois University. Go Salukis!
Casey Jones had done two runs on April 29, and had gone home to bed when the caller called. The engineer that was to take the run to Canton. Mississippi was ill. Besides that the train was running 75 minutes late, and it was a mail train. Casey was famous for being on time and was always catching up. Casey’s wife, Mary, went down to the station to see him off.
Casey hopped into engine 382 and departed at 11:35. There were several obstacles that slowed him down. In Memphis there was 2 ft of water on the track which he had to ease through. After that it was all downhill and he reached speeds over 100 miles an hour. There is a time when you start to hallucinate when you are deprived of sleep and he was having trouble seeing.
He might have missed a signal, he crashed into the back of a livestock car, a car filled with corn, and a car load of hay. There was a train on the siding that was too long for the spur and had cars on the main track. He was the only one killed in the crash.He stuck with it till he had it slowed down, and at the last second told his fireman to jump. No one else died, despite having a 100 passengers, and a dozen workers sorting mail. They opened the station at Vaughn, Mississippi, took his body there, and telegraphed the news.
One of the most cruel things was that his two young sons found out about it the next day in school. One of the students said, “Did you hear Casey Jones was killed last night?”
Those were the glory days of steam locomotives. The Wabash Cannonball ran through the country just a quarter mile east of our farm. It passed at 10:00 a.m. sharp. I can remember the first diesel locomotive. That train was a beauty.
—James Neuhouser
