(Terra Haute, September 1944. Photo credits below.)
The trains came together and crashed with a sound.
That people could hear for miles around.
The fog was so heavy, the engineer could not see.
Nor would he ever know what the outcome would be.
Two cars held airmen who’d flown missions over Italy.
Some were killed, while others were hurt badly.
Three long hours the sirens did blow.
The worst of sounds a nurse could know.
In memory, that tragic morning shall remain evermore,
Thursday, September fourteenth, nineteen hundred forty four.
I thanked God I was a nurse on that fateful day
So I could help hold onto lives, that were slipping away.
— Mary Lou Taylor S/N
The Handicapped placard for the rear-view mirror is in Alaska, or Arizona, or someplace even less useful. I parked the car a long way away from the entrance to the Sidedoor Saloon. We stopped at the Tannery Creek Market across the parking lot- it used to be a Pizza Hut as you could tell from the distinctive roof-line, but it has assumed new life as high-end gourmet food emporium.
Dee got some cuts of Hamtramck-style smoked kielbasa that she was going to cook with sauerkraut and drive the neighbors crazy down at Torch Lake. Then we navigated Raven back to the rental car that was parked inconveniently far from any door we wanted to use.
“Let’s drive over to Harbor Springs,” I said brightly, hoping the pleasant day and sunny skies would provide some stimulation while not lasting long enough that Raven would be in extremis again. The whole incontinence thing is a little more than I can handle. The shaving is bade enough, but the Depends adventure is not something I deal with well.
Thank God the little village has a public rest room, and that it is maintained clean and tidy, though I am not going to launch into that story. If you have been through this you know, and if you don’t, hope that you won’t.
Anyway, I was intrigued by Dee story of her Father Ernie the bootlegger, speed-boat driver, and man of his times. Once we had Raven buckled into the Shotgun seat and Magpie happy in the back, I started the SUV and pulled out onto US-131 north to take the 117 route north around the head of the Bay, past the State Park and the Tosky-Sands party store that I have been visiting since I required fake ID to purchase beer.
“Do you remember any more of the story?” I asked.
“Oh my, no. I heard Daddy tell the stories, of course. I was too young. I was twelve when the war ended and the 21st Amendment ending Prohibition was passed in 1933, the year before I was born. But Mom and my sister and the other kids were there the night Ernie was arrested.”
“What was that like?” I said, trying to imagine the arrest of a solid family man.
“It was about two in the morning. Everyone was in bed. The FBI surrounded the house, and one of the agents came up and started to bang on the door, shouting for Daddy to come out.”
“That must have been quite an alarming situation,” I said, looking at the airport to my left as the road bent west toward the Springs. Raven was commenting on the ride. “Smooth,” he said. He enjoys the rides, even if they fill me with a little apprehension.
“It was. Mom and Dad’s bedroom looked out on the roof gable, and Daddy grabbed his gun and went out the window. Mom told him not to do that.”
“Oh, my God. He had a drawn gun and went out to confront a posse of FBI Agents?”
“Yes, but there were so many of them he put it down. We did not see him again for more than a year. He was convicted, put on that train to Leavenworth, and served his debt to society, a year and a day in the prison. My sisters saw him, though. They went to Kansas and saw him in the visiting room. He asked for a Ten Dollar bill, which was a lot of money in those days, and he folded it up so small that he was able to put it under his tongue to take back to the cells.”
“Amazing,’ I said.
“When he got out, Ernie said they gave him a train ticket to Detroit, a new suit, an a raor blade.”
“A razor blade?”
“Yeas, Daddy said he suits were so cheap that if you got caught out in the rain it was shrink so fast it would strangle you. The razor blade was to let you cut your way out of the suit before it killed you.”
“He sounds like a hell of a guy.”
“He was. He stopped at a speakeasy in Detroit on his way home. Momma heard from a friend that “Ernie was out of jail,” but she had not seen him yet.”
“Everything in its time,” I said. “I would certainly stop for a cocktail on the way home. Don’t blame him.”
“What is he doing now?” asked Magpie brightly from her side of the back seat.
“He passed in the 1970s,” said Dee, for the third time in the conversation. “That was a natural passing for a life with a lot of adventure. Not like my brother Bob.”
“He was the one killed in the war, right?” I asked.
“Well, that was the interesting thing about it. He had served in Italy with the Air Corps. He went in the Service right at the beginning of the war and completed his 50 missions in 1944. He as shot down twice. The second time he and his crew were in the water for twelve hours before the British rescued them.”
“Wow,” I said. “But he died back here?”
“Yes. I have his log book with all the missions written down. After the last one he wrote “Michigan, Here I Come!”
“So what happened?”
He left Detroit from the Michigan Central Terminal after some home-leave and was headed for a connection in Chicago to go down south for an assignment as an instructor pilot, training the new guys. He had made it all the way through combat, and was safe at home.”
“Then what?”
“Two Chicago and Eastern Illinois trains collided head-on at 25th Street and Haythorne Avenue in Terre Haute, Indiana. Apparently there was a dense fog. I have the clipping about it. It was a huge tragedy. Bob was killed right there. I found it on the internet the other day.”
“That is so ironic,” I said.
“Yes, there was a lot of confusion. My brother Ray was serving in the South Pacific in the Navy, and everyone thought that Ernie was confused when he was making the calls to the family. Ray was in combat, and Bob was home safe. So everyone thought it was Ray who was killed.”
We tooled around harbor Springs and looked at the famous Steel Octagon house, and the Bar Harbor at the corner across from the famous Pier Restaurant, and then headed north out of town past the neat little houses and almost all the way up to Pond Hill Farm. I cut over on East Middle road to get back to town, and rolled back to the Village.
Dee and I walked them back up to the apartment and we got the hats and coats put away, and we made our exit to get Dee back to her car.
“I will be back for Happy Hour,” I said, as Raven plunked down on the couch to doze.
After Dee drove south, I checked the internet to see what I could find about the accident.
According to news accounts from September of 1944, a 15-car mail train heading north stopped at the signal about 2:18 a.m. But two minutes later it was struck by a 14-car passenger train traveling about 35 mph.
Investigators concluded hat in the fog the passenger train failed to enter a siding as instructed.
Many of the passengers aboard the second train were servicemen of the U.S. Army Air Force, heading to Miami from Chicago after a tour of duty on the Italian front of World War II.
As the wreckage was cleared, 29 were dead, 42 were injured, and Union Hospital was swamped. A nurse named Mary Lou Taylor wrote a poem about it, which is what leads you into this story. It was a damned shame.
Fifty missions complete, shot down twice, and survive it all. Then to die in Terre Haute, a month before your 21st birthday. Life is sure a crap-shoot, isn’t it?
Then I drove back over to the Village to have drinks with the folks before dinner. For Raven, a glass of ice-milk. For Magpie a glass of Box Blush wine. And for me, a tall tumbler of vodka, which I consider the second-to-last-stop on the Oblivion Express.
(Workers inspect the wreckage. Photos from the private collection of Betty Alcorn. Digital image copyright 2007 Indiana State University Library. Transferred via Powerpoint capture to jpeg format by Socotra 2011.)
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com